The HyperTexts

Donald Trump Coronavirus Timeline and History

Donald J. Trump clearly cares more about his ego, his "brand" and getting reelected president than he does about the lives and health of Americans, including their children. Here is the proof, in the form of a detailed Coronavirus Timeline that shows how Trump repeatedly endangered 330 million Americans, including children and especially the elderly, by continually lying in order to "look strong" and "presidential" in hope of getting reelected.

Is this the face of a man you can trust with the lives and health of your parents and grandparents, your children and grandchildren?



Is this the face of a man we can trust, or is this the face of a con man, a snake-oil salesman, a sham-man and a shaman? Do you trust this man? He trusts his gut, but what does your gut tell you?

For the last year of his presidency, Trump repeatedly downplayed the danger posed by the coronavirus, saying the numbers were small and would rapidly go down to zero, that he and his administration had earned a perfect ten for their response, and that the situation was "totally under control." These were not only bald lies, but lethal lies that resulted in many unnecessary deaths. How many unnecessary deaths? The number is shocking and is explained in the mini-timeline below and in the larger timeline that follows.

Eight Critical Dates: A Mini-Timeline

(1) The first critical date is January 23. Trump repeatedly claimed that "nobody knew" how dangerous the coronavirus was. But by January 23 the entire world knew how serious the problem was, because on that day China locked down Wuhan, a major city comparable in population to New York and twice as large as Los Angeles. That was a YUGE step and the whole world had been informed. On that very day Trump was briefed in the White House by American intelligence about the enormous danger posed by the coronavirus. From that day forward, Trump cannot claim to have been bamboozled by China. He knew what he needed to know, due to the extraordinary step China took in broad daylight before the eyes of a stunned world. Everything Trump said after January 23 about the coronavirus being "fake news" and a "hoax" that he had "totally under control" was therefore a bald lie. Trump now claims that he recognized the pandemic as a pandemic immediately; if so, why didn't he institute much tighter travel restrictions much faster? An ABC News investigation revealed that 3.4 million travelers entered the U.S. from other countries, including China, during the critical time period of December, January and February. If Trump had acted more decisively by March 2, he could have saved around 90% of the American lives lost to the coronavirus, as explained under the second headline below. With over 400,000 American coronavirus deaths on Trump's watch, that would be around 360,000 lives saved if Trump had acted faster and more decisively. Five days later, on Jan. 28, Trump was briefed on the coronavirus again. We now know from Bob Woodward's on-the-record tape interviews that at this point Trump was fully aware of the incredible danger posed to the United States and its citizens by the coronavirus. Woodward's book Rage is based on 18 phone calls the journalist had with Trump. "This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward in a Feb. 7 phone call: "You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu." Trump had been briefed on the full extent of the danger. "This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency," national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump during the followup Jan. 28 briefing. "This is going to be the roughest thing you face." Woodward wrote of the second briefing: "Presidents are the executive branch. There was a duty to warn. To listen, to plan, and to take care." But in the days following the second briefing, Trump used high-profile appearances to minimize the threat and, per Woodward, "to reassure the public they faced little risk."

Trump's failure to tell the truth and act quickly and decisively resulted in what Woodard called "the lost month of February." Millions of travelers continued to stream into the US—nearly two million of them in February alone—and the most popular American destination, New York City, became the epicenter of the pandemic. "It is one of those shocks, for me, having written about nine presidents, that the president of the United States possessed the specific knowledge that could have saved lives,” Woodward said on NBC’s Today show, "and historians are going to be writing about the lost month of February for tens of years."

(2) Perhaps the most critical date, March 2, is discussed in the next section under the heading "Trump Could Have Saved 360,000 American Lives, or More."

(3) A third critical date is March 11, when Trump finally barred travelers from some European countries, but still allowed entrance from others, including Great Britain, where Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson would soon contract the coronavirus as it raged out of control in England. This was yet another critical mistake by The Donald. In a televised address, Trump acknowledged that travelers from Europe had brought the disease to America. Trump accused Europe of spreading the "foreign virus" to the US. He said the EU had failed to "restrict travel from China and other hotspots" and that "as a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe." Two months later, based on genetic and epidemiological analyses, the CDC would confirm that Trump's action had come too late, because multitudes of people arriving from Europe had already accelerated the spread of the virus in the US.

Easter Sunday fell on April 12. A few weeks earlier, on March 24, Trump had told Fox News, "I would love to have the country opened up and raring to go by Easter," adding that it would be great to see "churches packed full of people for Easter." As we will see with the next critical date, Trump would soon be sending angry, intimidating tweets trying to force governors to reopen hastily and recklessly. But what was Trump doing himself? On the day after Easter, April 13, Trump said this to Woodward in a phone call:
Bob, it's so easily transmissible, you wouldn't even believe it. I mean, you could, you could be in the room ... I was in the White House a couple of days ago, meeting with 10 people in the Oval Office, and a guy sneezed, innocently. Not a horrible ... You know, just a sneeze. The entire room bailed out, OK? Including me, by the way." So what would happen if an infected person sneezed in a packed church? It would be potentially lethal. Trump would leap up and run from the church like a frightened rabbit. So why was Trump trying to pack churches in the middle of a pandemic, unless he simply doesn't care what happens to other Americans, or can't be bothered to life a finger or say a word to save them?

(4) A fourth critical date is April 17, when Trump put his reelection chances above the lives and health of millions of Americans by tweeting LIBERATE MINNESOTA!, LIBERATE MICHIGAN!, LIBERATE VIRGINIA! in an attempt to force Democratic governors to throw caution to the winds and reopen as fast as possible. Governors of red states like Florida and Texas who fell in line with Trump's reckless dictates saw their coronavirus cases explode. By April 17 no one in his right mind could ignore the hard facts. And yet Trump did, and continues to do so. It's not that he doesn't understand the facts, but that he just doesn't care enough to protect Americans from the greatest danger they've faced since WWII.

(5) A fifth critical date is July 7, when, like a cold-blooded Mafia don demanding his vig, Trump "leaned" on American school systems to reopen aggressively in the middle of a pandemic. Why? Trump has known since March 19 that "plenty" of young people get infected, as he explained to Bob Woodward in a taped telephone call. Apparently what matters to Trump are NOT the lives and health of children and their teachers and families, but his polls and reelection chances. With a vaccine only months away, why take such an incredible risk rather than wait? The answer, for Trump, is the looming November election. The lives, health and wellbeing of 76 million American schoolchildren seem to be an afterthought for Trump, if he thinks of them at all. In red states that reopened aggressively, adults have been unable to practice social distancing sufficiently to prevent the coronavirus from spreading like wildfire. The supremely conditioned athletes of the Tour de France and Olympics have not been able to compete safely. The LSU and Clemson national football championship squads could not take the field with more than 30 positive tests each. So how can anyone possibly expect children to stay safe? We need to protect our children from the coronavirus at all costs, and this means we now need to protect them from Trump. His incomprehensible lie that children are immune or "almost immune" to the coronavirus is a potentially very deadly, life-shattering lie, because the medical data tells us that as children get older they become more and more susceptible to the virus. Millions of American students are teenagers who become increasingly susceptible to the disease as their ages increase, but for the sake of his reelection chances Trump wants us to believe we can ignore the danger and treat them all the same, with cavalier disregard for the harrowing facts.

(6) A sixth critical date is August 5, when, even though the CDC has reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children, Trump says during an interview, "If you look at children, children are almost — and I would almost say definitely — but almost immune from this disease." He added, "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem." Trump tells this abominable and potentially very deadly lie even though he has known the truth for months. Trump went on to say, "My view is the schools should open, this thing is going away. It will go away like things go away. No question in my mind, it will go away." That makes no sense, because the coronavirus is related to the common cold and flu, and they have never "gone away."

(7) A seventh critical date is August 26, when, in a perplexing shift the CDC changes its Covid-19 testing guidelines to say asymptomatic people may not need to be tested, even if they've been in close contact with infected persons. Previously, the CDC had said testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic. A senior federal health official close to the process tells CNN that the sudden change in CDC testing guidance is due to pressure from the Trump White House: "It's coming from the top down." Everyone knows that Trump dislikes numbers that make him "look bad." Is he willing to risk killing large numbers of Americans in return for more attractive numbers? The consensus of the real medical experts is that we need to do more testing, not less. So if this perilous edict came from the top, it apparently came from the very top: from Trump himself. How many more Americans will Trump kill with his disdain for facts, logic and science? On the same day former White House national security adviser John Bolton said the Trump administration's coronavirus response has been "one mistake after another." Bolton told CNN's Jake Tapper: "They've made a complete mess of it, and it's been a tragedy for Americans, those who have died and their families, the economic consequences."

(8) The United State passed 400,000 coronavirus deaths on Trump's last day in office. And to show once again how dishonest Trump is, and how uncaring he is of other people's lives, Trump and Melania were vaccinated secretly before they left the White House. Why secretly, when being vaccinated in public would have reassured millions of Trump supporters that the vaccines are both safe and necessary? Once again Trump put his ego and narrow self-interests over other people's lives. He had lied once again, claiming to be "immune" to the disease, so now he declined to tell the truth. Trump wants to appear "strong" even though he is obviously growing older and frailer, and having trouble navigating not-so-steep inclines. Thus Trump will not tell the simple truth, even when it would save many, many lives. In short, Trump is a killer of his countrymen. His lies are lethal lies. An honest president could have saved many lives, but Trump is an inveterate liar.

If, as many American Christians believe, there are no accidents with God, it seems significant that the United States passed 400,000 covid-related deaths on Trump's last full day in office. When Trump left office on January 20, 2021 there were at least 404,284 deaths of Americans attributed to the coronavirus according to Johns Hopkins University, but the actual tally is surely much higher because so many Americans died untested. Thus, in Trump's last year as president, more Americans died from covid than all the Americans, military and civilian, who died as a result of World War II. According to JHU, when Trump left office there had been at least 24,365,741 cases of coronavirus in the US, but that number is also artificially low due to insufficient testing.

Where We Find Ourselves Now

By January 20, 2021 when Trump left office, there would be over 24 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US and that number would be vastly understated due to the chronic lack of available tests. The CDC has estimated actual infections to be double to thirteen times higher than the reported numbers. There would be over 400,000 American deaths, most of which could have been prevented with swift, decisive actions like those taken by China, Singapore and South Korea. Sometimes a picture truly does say more than a thousand words. The first graph on this page shows that nations like China, Italy and South Korea managed to flatten their coronavirus curves relatively quickly, while under Trump the USA's coronavirus curve continued to explode exponentially higher. The graph was created by one of American's most trusted healthcare organizations, Johns Hopkins University. Why are countries so much closer to the outbreak doing so much better than the US, which has now become the global epicenter for infections and deaths? Other nations had effective leadership while we had Trump primping, preening, rage-tweeting and lying. Trump fiddled like an American Nero while the country went up in the flames of the coronavirus fever, and the evidence is here, in the detailed timeline that follows. And much of the timeline consists of direct quotes of Trump's own devious, deceitful, very dangerous words.

Trump Could Have Saved 360,000 American Lives, or More

Here's a sobering fact: the USA has only 4.25% of the world's population yet at times has had around a quarter to nearly a THIRD of confirmed coronavirus deaths. That's a staggering disparity. How did the world's richest nation, with legions of medical experts and some of the finest medical organizations on the planet, end up with a death rate up to seven times higher than expected if its government had merely been average in its response? Epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell have said that 90% of US coronavirus deaths could have been avoided if social distancing had begun on March 2, when Trump had two months of information and warnings about the coronavirus but continued to insist that it was "totally under control." Researchers at Columbia University concurred, saying that Trump's two-week delay in mitigation, from March 1 to March 15, had multiplied the U.S. death toll by a factor of six. By May 3, the price of that delay was more than 50,000 lives. At the 400,000 death mark, two different teams of researchers are telling us that Trump could have saved more than 360,000 lives. According to a report by Isaac Sebenius and James Sebenius in Stat News, according to a stringency index developed by Oxford University, if the US had matched nations like Australia, Singapore and South Korea, up to 99% of the lost lives could have been saved, or close to 400,00 by early 2021. And we're far from out of the woods, thanks to Trump. "The fall could be incredibly gruesome," said Yale School of Medicine epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, explaining that the Trump administration largely squandered the summer months, leaving the nation no better protected than it was in June. "Somebody's going to have to explain it to me, ten years from now, why they would make all these bad choices." According to Wikipedia, American combat deaths for the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined are under 100,000. The coronavirus has now killed four times more Americans than all those horrors together, and the death toll continues to rise. Trump likes to call himself a "wartime president" but in reality he gave our greatest enemy easy access to our ports and airports when he failed to shut them down until it was far too late.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.―FDR
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.―JFK
The buck stops here.―HST
I don't take responsibility at all!―DJT

Trump said he didn't know that people died from the flu. His grandfather died from the flu! Now this six-times-bankrupted real estate salesman who claims he's "smarter" than American generals, intelligence officers, scientists and medical experts is managing the coronavirus pandemic, which he's called "fake news" and a "hoax." But fake news and hoaxes don't kill more people than five wars combined. In the past Trump advocated nuking hurricanes, water-bombing Notre Dame Cathedral, denying charity to sharks, tilting at windmills, and raking forest "floors" to combat wildfires. What could possibly go wrong?

"President Trump has responded to the coronavirus outbreak by (among other things) promising it would go away by itself, playing golf, blaming China, blaming the media, blaming Democrats, lying about it, attempting to bribe Germany's vaccine industry and saying he's responding to it perfectly."―USA Today

"It turns out that in a time of crisis a conman is not up to the task."―Rolling Stone

These are the lies Donald Trump told as 400,000 Americans went to their graves on his watch: "On behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi! We have it totally under control! We have it so under control! We're doing a fantastic job! It's a hoax! It's fake news! We're prepared! We're not prepared and it's Obama's fault! We're doing a great job! We shut it down! It will just go away, like a miracle! It miraculously goes away! That goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in! I like this stuff [because it makes me look smart]! The tests are "perfect" and "beautiful"! Anybody that wants a test can get a test! It's very mild! Just stay calm! I give myself a perfect ten! We have very little problem! That's working out very smoothly! I don't take responsibility at all! It's really working out! The numbers are going very substantially down, not up! They're all getting better! It will go away! We've had very good luck! We've done an incredible job! Nobody's asking for ventilators! We did everything right! Everything's going to be great! I'm not concerned at all! It's pretty amazing [what we did]! This is a flu! We did all the right moves! The trajectory is great! We made every decision correctly! We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus! [For] the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low! We have met the moment and we have prevailed! 99% of cases are totally harmless! We will expeditiously defeat this virus! The virus will not have a chance against us! The numbers are very miniscule[sic]! [Very minuscule? The latter was said with 120,000 Americans dead and thousands more dying every week.] We've done a phenomenal job! I give myself an A+! (This was said with the US at the 200,000 coronavirus death mark.) It affects virtually nobody! It's an amazing thing!"

The Atlantic has created a timeline documenting Trump's lethal lies and explaining why the lies were lies.

If the Coronavirus is "fake news" and a "hoax," why had more than 200,000 Americans died in just a few months, with the death toll still inexorably rising and soon to double on Trump's watch? In just a few months the coronavirus killed more Americans than the Korean War, the Vietnam War, 9-11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Why does Trump keep saying that he "shut it down" if it's a hoax? He could simply expose a hoax; there would be no need to shut it down. No one would die if it were a hoax. There would be no need to suspend travel to the United States. There would be no need to shut down schools, colleges, conventions, and professional sports. There would be no need to quarantine elderly people in nursing homes so that they can't hug their loved ones. There would be no need to spend trillions of dollars on a hoax.

In a rare moment of honesty Trump said that more than two million Americans might die if extreme measures were not taken. Thus, very obviously, the coronavirus pandemic is not a hoax. So why all the Trump lies?

As Dan Diamond reported, Trump hasn't pushed for aggressive coronavirus testing because he's "made it clear that the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for his potential reelection this fall." Lying about the numbers of Americans suffering and dying is good for Trump's reelection chances. Trump thinks Americans are so gullible their families and friends can die and they'll still vote for him, just as he said he could shoot someone in cold blood and not lose any votes. What seems to make no sense actually makes perfect sense, when we understand that Trump cares more about himself, his "brand" and his reelection, even his freakin' hair, than he does about the people who will suffer and die for his dishonesty. Trump wants Americans to ignore the suffering and dying to focus on the numbers that matter most to him: the price of gas, stock prices, and especially his ratings, polls and election numbers.

Trump confirmed what Diamond said in a March 25, 2020 tweet, in which he returned to portraying the coronavirus pandemic as a "hoax" that can be safely ignored, this time starting with his magical timeline of Easter. Trump's motivation is apparent in this tweet: "The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!" Thus the coronavirus, which started out as a next-to-nothing "hoax," then became the pandemic Trump had always seen and recognized, is now back to "hoax" status again. Never mind about Americans who may suffer and die, while putting their loved ones at risk, if they return to work too soon. They are not "real people" to Trump! What really matters to Trump is that Trump gets reelected. To do that he needs everyone to work, whether they live or die, and whether or not they infect their loved ones in the process. Get your priorities straight, Americans, and put your Fearless Leader first, as he does Himself! He is completely fearless as far as you and your families are concerned! Now we know why he's imperially called The Donald. How many Americans will suffer and die, to give Trump a better shot at getting reelected?

A Trump attorney has confirmed that Trump has been "patently false, misleading and deceptive" in a cease-and-desist letter he sent to American TV stations regarding an unflattering campaign ad. "On behalf of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., President Trump's principal campaign committee, this letter notifies you that your station is airing a patently false, misleading, and deceptive advertisement," wrote Alex Cannon, special counsel to Trump's campaign. But the ad simply replays Trump's recorded public statements about the coronavirus, in his own voice, saying things like: "The coronavirus ... is their new hoax" and "We have it totally under control" and "One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear" and "People are surprised that I understand it." The ad ends with the self-damning: "No, I don't take responsibility at all!" Trump obviously doesn't want to be quoted now that the truth has come out. We are reminded of Trump viciously attacking Megyn Kelly when all she did was quote things he had said publicly about women. Even Trump can't stand to hear how awful he sounds.

Nor has Trump outperformed the leaders of all other nations, as he constantly claims when he gives himself a perfect ten and says the US is the world leader in its coronavirus response. John Hopkins has published mortality statistics for death rates per 100,000 capita (which eliminates testing as a factor) and the US is far worse than nations like Brazil, Bolivia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The only industrialized nation remotely close to the US in coronavirus deaths per capita is the United Kingdom, which has another moron in charge in Boris Johnson (who actually contracted the virus himself, along with members of the royal family).

Here are the lies Donald Trump told about the Coronavirus epidemic, which was never a hoax, and which he never had under control ...

May 2017

Trump's proposed 2018 federal budget would excise $1.2 billion from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). That's nearly one-fifth of the total budget for the nation's primary protector against infectious diseases like the coronavirus. Former CDC Director Tom Frieden "fired off a series of uncharacteristically charged tweets" in which he warned that Trump's proposed CDC budget "risks Americans' health and safety" and is "unsafe at any level of enactment." Frieden predicted that Trump's CDC budget "Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs."

May 2018

Trump dumps and dismantles the White House's National Security Council directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense (GHSB), which had been established after the 2014 Ebola epidemic with the goal of doing "everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic." The day before news of GHSB senior director R. Timothy Ziemer's ouster became public, one of the officials on his team, Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the NSC, spoke at a symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. That event killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. Ziemer, Borio and Tom Bossert, the former Homeland Security adviser who oversaw a since-disbanded global health security team, were all ousted shortly after John Bolton joined the Trump White House. When a PBS reporter, Yamiche Alcindor, later asked Trump why he had eliminated the National Security Council's pandemic response unit, Trump called it a "nasty question." He would take "no responsibility at all" for his decision to leave the coronavirus pandemic to chance.

March 2019

Trump releases his fiscal year 2020 federal budget proposal, which recommends huge cuts of 12 percent to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and 10 percent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This would leave Americans much more vulnerable to the coming coronavirus pandemic.

Nov. 17, 2019

The first known case of viral pneumonia emerges in Wuhan, China. This new virus, not yet identified, would quickly begin to spread ...

Dec. 30, 2019

Dr. Li Wenliang, a Wuhan physician, reports seven confirmed hospital cases of a form of SARS coronavirus that was still being subtyped. He posts evidence on social media. He is interrogated and censured by Chinese police, and is given instructions not to make further public statements. The good doctor would later die after being infected with the coronavirus by a patient. Surely American intelligence would know about this case, so Trump's claim of China's "transparency" on Jan. 24 flies in the face of reason. China was making sure that doctors did not warn anyone about the danger. The government would carefully control the news that came out, and how it was "spun" and when.

Dec. 31, 2019

China announces the first known novel coronavirus cases, in Wuhan. China notifies the WHO (World Health Organization). In this context "novel" means "new." The new virus would be identified and given its official designations a week later (see the entry for Jan. 7).

Early January, 2020

According to CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, although Trump was warned about the dangers of the coronavirus multiple times in January, he declined to act: "Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were—they just couldn't get him to do anything about it," one official told the Post. "The system was blinking red." Trump's aides tried in vain to convince him of the virus's seriousness, but two senior administration officials said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was not allowed to discuss the virus with Trump until January 18, at which point the President interrupted him to ask when sales of flavored vaping products would resume! China publicly announced on Jan. 3 that it was punishing eight people for publishing "false" information on the Internet, so American intelligence must have known that China was not being "transparent." But Trump trusts our adversaries and enemies more that his own intelligence officers ...

Jan. 5, 2020

WHO officials announce a "pneumonia of unknown cause" in Wuhan, China.

Jan. 7, 2020

Acting very quickly, WHO officials announce they have identified a new virus, designated 2019-nCoV and identified as belonging to the coronavirus family, which includes SARS and the common cold. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus would later be designated COVID-19. The CO stands for "corona" the VI for "virus" the D for "disease" and the 19 for 2019. The virus itself is designated SARS-CoV-2 for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus number 2.

Jan. 8, 2020

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues a public health advisory about the new disease. Obviously, the CDC would not alert the public without first alerting the White House and Trump.

Trump cannot claim to be uninformed at this point, although he will disagree with the experts for months, then absurdly claim that he was right and they were wrong!

Jan. 9, 2020

The WHO announces the source of the disease: "Chinese authorities have made a preliminary determination of a novel (new) coronavirus, identified in a hospitalized person with pneumonia in Wuhan."

Jan. 10, 2020

Trump has been warned about the danger emerging in China, and he has been warned that China has not been totally forthcoming. And yet Trump will speak of China in glowing terms. Why? Because he was working on a China trade agreement that he thought would help him get reelected. “We have a great relationship with China right now, so I don’t want to speak badly of anyone,” Trump tells Laura Ingraham on Jan. 10 in a Fox News interview. “I’m riding a fine line because we’re making ... great trade deals,” he pleaded. He didn't want to speak badly of China and risk blowing the trade deal. So he lied at a time of great peril to Americans and the world.

Jan. 11, 2020

China announces the first known death due to the novel coronavirus, in Wuhan.

Jan. 12, 2020

The full genome of the coronavirus is published and made available to labs around the world.

Jan. 13, 2020

The first novel coronavirus case outside China is reported in Thailand; the patient had been to Wuhan.

Jan. 15, 2020

Trump signs the Chine trade deal he had long coveted and on which he was banking reelection hopes. Trump lauds China's president Xi and says previous American presidents were at fault for past troubles between the two countries! National Security Adviser John Bolton would later reveal Trump's fawning behavior before Xi and how he begged Xi for help with his reelection.

Jan. 16, 2020

A German lab creates the first coronavirus test available outside China.

Jan. 17, 2020

The CDC dispatches more than 100 staffers to three US airports to screen passengers arriving from Wuhan. This is a highly unusual step only taken during major health crises.

The CDC obviously recognizes the danger. It is Trump's "prime directive" to protect Americans from enemy threats. The coronavirus will be a far bigger threat to Americans than Al-Qaeda, ISIS and all wars since WWII combined. But Trump will shirk his duty and let the enemy infiltrate the country from multiple entry points, while pooh-poohing the risk and repeatedly bragging about his performance, his hair and his ratings. Like an American Nero, he will fiddle while the country burns with a fever that could have been denied easy entry.

Jan. 18, 2020

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar briefs Trump on the spread of the coronavirus. Trump would call Azar an "alarmist" and tell him to "stop panicking."

Trump ignores the experts and once again relies on his "gut" and "hunches." Trump will not take the coronavirus seriously for months, repeatedly pooh-poohing the risk, and giving the virus the opportunity to spread like wildfire through the US and his birthplace, New York City.

Jan. 20, 2020

The WHO reports novel coronavirus cases in China, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. A Chinese government official confirms that the coronavirus can be transmitted from person to person.

Jan. 21, 2020

The CDC confirms that the first novel coronavirus case in the US is a Washington State man in his 30s who had returned from Wuhan. The WHO says the risk is high globally. Two of the government’s top health officials—Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC—warn that the virus is beginning to circulate the globe. Other scientists and medical experts are warning that the coronavirus is highly contagious and ten times as lethal as the flu. (From this point forward we will drop the term "novel" but we are talking about the same new, previously unknown, form of the coronavirus.)

Dr. Messonnier tells reporters: "We do expect additional cases in the United States and globally."

By this date it was known that the coronavirus had reached France, and within ten days it would predictably reach Italy, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom. Suddenly, Europe was a greater danger than China because of much more frequent travel from Europe to the US. But once again Trump would do far too little, far too late.

Jan. 22, 2020

Trump ignores the experts who work for him and either speaks out of abject ignorance or blatantly lies: "We have it totally under control! ... It's going to be just fine!"

Trump discusses the coronavirus in a television interview from Davos with CNBC's Joe Kernen. The first American case had just been announced the day before, and Kernen asks Trump: "Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?" Trump replies: "No. Not at all. We have it totally under control! It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control! It's going to be just fine!" Trump preferred to talk about trade instead: “The China deal is amazing, and we’ll be starting Phase Two very soon,” he said. When Kernen asked whether the Chinese were telling the whole truth about the virus, Trump said they were: “I have a great relationship with President Xi,” he boasted. “We just signed probably the biggest deal ever made.”

Trump would later claim that he saw from the outset how grim the situation was. This was clear, he recalled, in the “initial numbers coming out from China.” But he kept lying to Americans, claiming everything was fine. “We’re in great shape,” he assured Maria Bartiromo in a Fox Business interview on Jan. 22. “China’s in good shape, too.”

China does not agree that the virus is "totally under control" and that everything is "going to be just fine" or that China was "in good shape." The following day China prepares for a modern Plague by isolating and closing off Wuhan, a major city with a larger population than any American city. China does what Trump will fail to do: it seals off its epicenter of the coronavirus. The global epicenter will quickly shift to Trump's birthplace, New York City. Trump would later complain that China had withheld information, leaving him in the dark. But as early as Jan. 23, China had told the whole world how very serious this pandemic was, by locking down one of its major cities. It is impossible that American intelligence didn't know this and report its conclusions to Trump. In fact, as we will see, Trump was briefed the same day, no doubt due to this stunning development. But Trump will do what Trump does: he will trust his ignorant gut and ignore the advice of professionals.

By January 20, 2021, when Trump left office, there would be over 24 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US and that number would be vastly understated due to the lack of available tests. The CDC has estimated actual infections to be double to thirteen times higher than the reported numbers. There would be over 400,000 deaths, most of which could have been prevented with immediate, decisive actions like those taken by China, Singapore, and South Korea. And after January 23, 2020, Trump cannot claim that China had bamboozled him, because the whole world knew that China had taken the extraordinary step of locking down a city with a larger population than New York City and more than twice as large as Los Angeles.

"Singapore has done everything right," said David Heymann, who led the World Health Organization's response to the 2003 SARS outbreak. "They've been openly communicating every day what's going on. And they've made it clear to the population and the population understands that they are not only to protect themselves but protect others." If only Trump had been as proactive and honest.

Jan. 23, 2020

China tells the whole world how serious things are by locking down Wuhan and its population of around 11 million souls—larger than New York City and more than twice as large as Los Angeles.

According an NPR report, Trump is briefed on the coronavirus on Jan. 23, so he can't claim ignorance (although he still will, repeatedly, while also claiming to know more about the coronavirus than anyone else because of his "gut"). A White House official told NPR that during the briefing Trump was informed the coronavirus was potentially going to "spread globally." There were already cases in the US, so this was not "theoretical" speculation. It was already happening. China had just locked down a major city, which no doubt prompted the briefing. If Trump had acted proactively at this point, he could have kept the coronavirus from spreading like wildfire in the US. He could have saved tens of thousands of American lives. But he didn't. Rather, Trump pooh-poohed the risk for months, while leaving American borders, ports and airports open to infected travelers.

CDC advisers tell CNN they are concerned that Chinese health officials haven't released basic epidemiological data about the virus, making it more difficult to contain the outbreak.

Trump is either not listening to American experts, or he is deliberately lying. Trump will praise China for its "transparency" the following day ...

Jan. 24, 2020

Trump tweets: "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well! In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declares an emergency in China and warns that the coronavirus could become a global health emergency.

Trump will fail to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously for months, insisting in a myriad of public statements that he has the problem "totally under control" and that the numbers in the US were small and would quickly go down to zero, etc.

Jan. 26, 2020

Chinese health officials announce that asymptomatic people who are infected with the coronavirus can spread the disease before they show any symptoms. This is a deeply troubling feature of the virus that Trump will ignore in his "advice" to the American public.

Jan. 28, 2020

According to an NPR source at the White House, Trump is briefed on the coronavirus for the second time in five days. This time, Trump "was told that virus was spreading outside of China" and that "China was withholding data." We now know from the Bob Woodward on-the-record tape interviews that at this time Trump was fully aware of the incredible danger posed to the United States and its citizens by the coronavirus. Woodward's book Rage is based on 18 on-the-record phone calls the journalist had with Trump. "This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward in a Feb. 7 phone call: "You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu."

Trump was fully aware of the danger. "This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency," national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump during the Jan. 28 briefing. "This is going to be the roughest thing you face." Trump's head "popped up," according to Woodward. O'Brien's deputy, Matt Pottinger, concurred, telling Trump it could be as bad as the influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans. Pottinger warned Trump that asymptomatic spread was occurring in China where 50% of those infected showed no symptoms.

"Presidents are the executive branch. There was a duty to warn. To listen, to plan, and to take care," Woodward writes. But in the days following the January 28 briefing, Trump used high-profile appearances to minimize the threat and, Woodward writes, "to reassure the public they faced little risk."

Three days later, Trump would announce restrictions on some travel from China, although not all travel. This was a move suggested by his national security team, despite Trump's later claims that only he supported travel limitations.

Trump tweets that Johnson & Johnson will create a coronavirus vaccine. Trump loves to name-drop, but he doesn't bother to mention that experts are saying it will take a year or longer for a vaccine to become available to the public. That's far too late to help with the current crisis.

Jan. 29, 2020

Trump once again makes it sound as if everything is fine and dandy: "Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!"

Then why aren't you following the experts' advice? Obviously by this point you have been told the real facts. So why do you continue to spew fake news at your press briefings and in your tweets?

As American coronavirus cases and deaths soared and eclipsed China's, Trump would change his tune and start blaming China, along with everyone other than himself.

Trump appoints Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to head a White House coronavirus task force. Azar had been vocal about the risk and had briefed Trump at least as early as Jan. 18, so Trump's later claims that "no one" had seen a pandemic coming would be blatantly false.

Peter Navarro, Trump's trade adviser, writes a memo warning the Trump administration that the coronavirus could put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death and cost the US trillions of dollars. Navarro wrote: "The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on US soil. This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans."

Trump's response according to a Slate source, was to tell Navarro not to put his concerns in writing!

Trump would continue to dismiss and downplay the risk, even after having been briefed and advised by his own experts and advisers. He would prefer his "hunches" to expert advice. Trump would later say that no one could have predicted such a devastating outcome. That is just one of many lies he told while the coronavirus pandemic spread like wildfire, just as the experts predicted it would if extreme preventive measures were not taken immediately.

Navarro would write a second memo on Feb. 23, warning of an "increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1.2 million souls."

Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, says, "The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter or other epicenter that becomes established."

Trump's failure to act quickly and decisively would allow the US to become the global epicenter for the coronavirus.

Jan. 30, 2020

Trump tweets: "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we're working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it's going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you."

Yeah, right.

The WHO disagrees, declaring a global health emergency.

Trump's health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II, directly warns Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president within two weeks. Trump, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that Mr. Azar was being an alarmist.

At a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump says: "We only have five people. Hopefully, everything's going to be great. They have somewhat of a problem, but hopefully, it's all going to be great. But we're working with China, just so you know, and other countries very, very closely. So it doesn't get out of hand."

Jan. 31, 2020

"Coronavirus," Sean Hannity asks. "How concerned are you?" Trump replies: "Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China."

Sure you did.

Alex Azar, who heads the new White House coronavirus task force, does not agree with Trump and announces a public health emergency.

Around 200 Americans are evacuated from China and flown to a military base in California, where they are quarantined. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, says the drastic move was necessary because "we are facing an unprecedented health threat" from coronavirus."

Intelligent, informed people are very concerned about the coronavirus. Trump has been informed, so one must question his ability to understand simple facts.

The crisis in China continues to grow and the virus is spreading around the world. Trump’s medical advisers agree with his national security team that he should suspend travel from China. But so far Trump has resisted. He had spent months cultivating a relationship with Xi and securing the long-coveted trade deal. He was counting on China to buy American goods and boost the U.S. economy, thereby helping him win reelection. He had said this to Xi explicitly, in a conversation witnessed by then-National Security Adviser John Bolton. Trump also worried that a travel ban would scare the stock market. But by the end of January, airlines were halting flights to China anyway. On Jan. 31, Trump finally gave in. But once again it would be far too little, far too late.

Trump’s deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, pleaded for a ban on travel from Europe, but other advisers said this would hurt the economy in an election year. Trump, persuaded by Pottinger’s opponents, refused to go along.

Feb. 1, 2020

In early February, trade adviser Peter Navarro, biomedical research director Rick Bright, and other officials warned Trump about shortages masks, ventilators, and other medical supplies. A scoffing Trump pooh-poohed the requests: “They say, ‘Oh, he should do more.’ There’s nothing more you can do.”

Deadly words from a do-nothing president.

Feb. 2, 2020

"Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. … We can't have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. So we're gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes."

Trump finally acts to limit travel from China, after a month of pooh-poohing the risk and doing virtually nothing to protect Americans. But he doesn't ban all travel from China, leaving the door open for returning Americans, their families, and "trade" (a very broad spectrum). Nor does Trump act before anyone could have imagined the scope of the pandemic, as he will later claim. In reality, many nations' governments acted faster than that the Trump administration and by this date 36 nations had enacted travel bans or limitations. And Trump doesn't do anything at this time about the main source of the disease: Europe. Genetic research indicates that the coronavirus would begin to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia. This is according to Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study of the coronavirus genome. How many lives could Trump have saved if he had shut down all travel from Europe earlier?

Why just China, when by this time it was clearly a pandemic, a global nightmare? How many infected people entered the US from other countries? New York would become the global epicenter for the coronavirus. Why? The Trump administration was allowing multitudes of foreign businesspeople and tourists to enter New York in the middle of a global pandemic. Thus New Yorkers had more exposure to the virus.

Even worse, in the weeks to come Trump would argue that the partial travel ban had made other protective measures unnecessary. Once again, he would be proven tragically wrong.

Feb. 4, 2020

Over 2,600 passengers and 1,000 crew are quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan.

Feb. 5, 2020

Trump has declined to use tests created by the WHO. There is a costly delay while the CDC creates its own test kit. When the CDC tests finally go out on Feb. 5, they are defective, putting the US even further behind the coronavirus curve. Why didn't Trump go with with WHO tests until the CDC tests had been verified and were available in large-enough numbers? There would be shortages well into the month of April. How many lives could have been saved by using the WHO-issued tests?

Feb. 7, 2020

Trump tweets tributes worthy of a Chinese propagandist: “Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. ... Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!”

Following the call with China President Xi Jinping, Trump tells Bob Woodward the conversation centered around the coronavirus outbreak: "I think he is going to have it in good shape. But it's a very tricky situation. It goes through air, Bob," Trump said. "It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus." Trump added, "This is deadly stuff."

At this point, Trump clearly knows the coronavirus is air-communicable and that it is deadly. And yet he will soft-pedal the virus for months, misleading 330 million Americans in the process.

Trump says: "... [efforts] will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone."

What Trump doesn't say is that the "warm weather miracle" theory came from China's President Xi. Trump would later reveal that Xi had said this. So an American president has been pushing Chinese propaganda. Trump would even defend the Chinese disinformation, telling Fox New viewers that "every country does it."

How did Trump go from "totally under control" to "hopefully" warm weather will weaken the virus, in two weeks? Trump will repeat this line of wishful thinking weeks later, on Feb. 19, making him a false prophet along with his other failed predictions.

Experts are not counting on warmer weather. Dr. Bruce Aylward, an Assistant Director of the WHO, says: "I would not be betting on Mother Nature here. I would be betting on case-finding." ABC's Dr. Ashton stressed that the public needs reliable information in order to make informed decisions. "We don't have a crystal ball here," Ashton said. "I always say, in medicine and science, we have to go based on fact, not fear, and evidence, not emotion."

But Trump always goes with his emotional gut, ignoring the advice of scientists, generals, intelligence analysts, and other experts.

The experts weren't saying the coronavirus would magically weaken and vanish. Only Trump was saying that. And of course he was wrong. Dead wrong.

Feb. 8, 2020

The first American citizen dies from coronavirus, in Wuhan, China.

Feb. 10, 2020

Trump: "I think the virus is going to be — it's going to be fine ... that goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in."

Trump told people at a rally: "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away."

It would start getting warmer in April, but coronavirus cases and deaths would continue to climb exponentially.

White House acting budget director Russell Vought: "Coronavirus is not something that is going to have ripple effects."

Yeah, right. Tell that to the stock market. You say that you have it "totally" under control and are also hoping desperately that warm weather will bail you out. Which one is it?

The following day a real expert would issue a direct warning to world leaders in denial, like Trump ...

Feb. 11, 2020

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns world leaders: "To be honest, a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack. A virus can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action, and that's true. If the world doesn't want to wake up and consider this enemy virus as Public Enemy Number One, I don't think we will learn our lessons."

Feb. 13, 2020

Trump is not getting the message and tells Geraldo Rivera: "In our country, we only have, basically, 12 cases, and most of those people are recovering and some cases fully recovered. So it's actually less."

Try telling that to all the Americans who will contract the coronavirus because you kept insisting it was no big deal, rather than acting swiftly and decisively.

CDC Director Robert Redfield in an interview with CNN contradicts Trump's wishful thinking that the coronavirus will miraculously vanish with warmer weather, saying the deadly virus "is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year."

Feb. 14, 2020

Trump: "We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It's like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we're in very good shape."

The numbers are going up everywhere in the world, liar, and they will soon be the highest in the US.

Thanks to Trump's missteps and non-steps, the US is only doing around 100 tests per day at this point. Trump likes the shortage of tests because more positive cases make him "look bad."

Feb. 19, 2020

Trump continues to ignore reality: "I think it's going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let's see what happens, but I think it's going to work out fine."

Trump told a Phoenix television station: "I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along."

The numbers would rapidly get much worse, with case counts and death counts rising exponentially as the weather got warmer. Trump is a false prophet and his lies and misinformation will help produce a staggering death toll in the warmer months to come. The coronavirus will ravage warm weather states like Florida and California, as well as sweltering regions of Brazil and tropical cruise ships. The virus thrives inside human beings with fevers well over 100 degrees. There is no reason to believe the coronavirus will magically vanish with warmer temperatures. The medical experts do not agree with Trump, but he continues to ignore them, preferring to go by his ignorant gut.

Feb. 23, 2020

Peter Navarro writes a second memo warning Trump and the White House of an "increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1.2 million souls."

The Trump administration was planning to ask Congress for a scanty $3 billion to combat the pandemic. Navarro's memo severely criticized this cavalier approach: "This is NOT a time for penny-pinching or horse trading on the Hill ... Any member of the Task Force who wants to be cautious about appropriating funds for a crisis that could inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage and take millions of lives has come to the wrong administration." The Trump administration then reduced its request to $2.5 billion. Wiser heads in Congress would increase it to $8 billion, no thanks to Trump & Co.

The following day, Trump once again ignores reality ...

Feb. 24, 2020

Trump tweets: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"

That day the stock market dived over a thousand points, the largest drop in two years. And much bigger drops were coming.

Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, says: "You should seriously consider buying [on] these [stock market] dips."

The stock market itself does not agree.

The Trumps visit India. According to a Vanity Fair source, during the trip Melania warns her husband to "take the virus response seriously." According to the source, "he totally blew her off" and Melania later said Trump "only hears what he wants to hear and surrounds himself with yes-people and family."

Trump would later claim he didn't shakes any hands in India, but an Indian website would publish pictures of Trump shaking hands seven times.

By Feb. 24, Trump has been warned about the coronavirus by American intelligence, the CDC, the WHO, Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Dr. Robert Redfield, other American medical experts, and his own wife. Trump cannot claim ignorance, although he will continue to do so, repeatedly.

And Trump would continue to ignore the experts. The next day he said ...

Feb. 25, 2020

Trump: "You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are … getting better. They're all getting better. … As far as what we're doing with the new virus, I think that we're doing a great job. ... That's a problem that's going to go away."

They are not "all" getting better. More and more Americans are dying. You are failing miserably at your primary duty of protecting the American people.

Trump tweets: "CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world."

Does Trump foolishly believe that white Europeans traveling to the United States will be immune to the coronavirus? Why didn't he close ALL entrances to the US?

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow toes the Trump party line: "We have contained this. I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight. We have done a good job in the United States."

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, publicly warns that it is "inevitable" that the coronavirus will spread in the US and says, "We need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives." Trump reportedly calls Alex Azar fuming that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet, per The New York Times. Trump, in a rage, threatens to fire Messonnier. The next day, he seizes control of the administration’s press briefings on the virus.

Feb. 26, 2020

Trump: "Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That's a pretty good job we've done."

Trump: "[The number of people infected is] going very substantially down, not up."

So according to Trump, only 15 Americans were infected with coronavirus, and that number was going to be close to zero in two days! But just three weeks later, the coronavirus had infected at least 10,000 Americans. That number would rise to over 100,000 by the end of March and over 350,000 by early April. And due to the Trump administration's inability to deliver enough functional tests, the actual numbers were undoubtedly much higher. Meanwhile, nations like South Korea were testing 10,000 people per day. But they had leaders who took the pandemic seriously and acted proactively.

Trump: "So we're at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we're going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we've had very good luck."

Trump rage-tweets, accusing CNN and MSDNC of falsely "panicking markets" and insists "USA in great shape!"

Trump is either lying, or off his rocker, or both.

Trump: "This is a flu. This is like a flu. Now, you treat this like a flu. It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."

No, liar, the experts say it will be a year or longer before a coronavirus vaccine is available!

The same day California announces the first case of coronavirus in the U.S. with no clear source of exposure.

Q: This is spreading — or is going to spread, maybe, within communities. That's the expectation.
A: It may. It may.
Q: Does that worry you?
A: No. ... No, because we're ready for it. It is what it is. We're ready for it. We're really prepared. ... We hope it doesn't spread. There's a chance that it won't spread too, and there's a chance that it will, and then it's a question of at what level.

Trump continues to lie here about being "ready," because as the cases mount he will blame China, the CDC and Obama for his administration being unprepared for a pandemic.

Trump claims the U.S. is "rapidly developing a vaccine" for COVID-19 and "will essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner." Later in the same press conference Trump insists the coronavirus is like the flu: "We will essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."

More lies. At the same press conference Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), says a vaccine won't be ready for "a year to a year-and-a-half" and won't be available for the current epidemic: "We can't rely on a vaccine over the next several months to a year. However, if this virus, which we have every reason to believe it is quite conceivable that it will happen, will go beyond just a season and come back and recycle next year. If that's the case, we hope to have a vaccine." Dr. Fauci went on to explain that even if a possible virus went into testing soon, it would still take a year or longer to be sure the vaccine is safe for healthy people.

At the same press briefing where Trump says the numbers are going down and will soon be "close to zero," the head of the White House coronavirus task force, Alex Azar, disagrees, saying: "The degree of risk has the potential to change quickly, and we can expect to see more cases in the United States."

Trump does not like having his lies contradicted and replaces Azar with the ultimate yes-man, Vice President Mike Pence, as head of the coronavirus task force. In the three weeks after his Feb. 26 crackdown on his subordinates, Trump would oppose or obstruct every response to the crisis, according to Slate sources. Trump's greatest contribution to the ever-increasing death toll was his resistance to public health “mitigation” measures: social distancing, school and workplace closures, and cancellations of large gatherings. Dr. Messonnier and others had warned since early February that Americans needed to prepare for such measures. On Feb. 24, Trump’s health advisers decided it was time to act. But they couldn’t get a meeting with Trump, because he was off to India to discuss another trade deal. When he returned, he blew up at Messonnier for talking about closing schools and offices. The meeting to discuss mitigation was canceled.

Feb. 27, 2020

Trump: "It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

Trump: "Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!"

Trump is lying about the numbers going down. He has been repeatedly informed otherwise by American medical experts.

Feb. 28, 2020

Trump calls the coronavirus "their new hoax" at a campaign rally in North Charleston, SC. Trump also accuses the press of “hysteria” and calls criticism of his virus policies a “hoax.” But the "hoax" would claim its first American victim the very next day, and go on to kill more than 180,000 Americans by August.

Donald Trump: "I think it's really going well. We did something very fortunate: we closed up to certain areas of the world very, very early — far earlier than we were supposed to. I took a lot of heat for doing it. It turned out to be the right move, and we only have 15 people and they are getting better, and hopefully they're all better. There's one who is quite sick, but maybe he's gonna be fine. … We're prepared for the worst, but we think we're going to be very fortunate."

Eric Trump: "In my opinion, it's a great time to buy stocks or into your 401k. I would be all in . . . let's see if I'm right."

Note: The stock market continued to crash and would soon crash even harder.

Coronavirus cases spread across Europe, including Italy, Germany, France, England, Switzerland and Belarus.

The real experts do not agree with Donald and Eric Trump's giddy assessments. The WHO raises the global risk of the coronavirus from "high" to "very high."

One of Trump's higher-perched parrots, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, also brushes off the coronavirus pandemic as a hoax being used to "bring down the president."

Feb. 29, 2020

The first American coronavirus death occurs, in Seattle. Trump had called the virus a "hoax" just the day before. This would be one of many times the coronavirus would contradict Trump and call him on his cavalier lies and deceptions.

Trump: "We're the number-one travel destination anywhere in the world, yet we have far fewer cases of the disease than even countries with much less travel or a much smaller population."

Trump insists a vaccine will be available "very quickly" and "very rapidly" and praises his administration's actions as "the most aggressive taken by any country."

Another lie. Other nations' administrations have been much more aggressive and much more successful. For instance, China, where the virus originated. China would quickly flatten its coronavirus curve with strong, effective measures. Trump would blab and lie, blab and lie, while New York became the global epicenter of the disease. Singapore, like NYC a densely populated city of millions, would avoid NYC's fate by taking immediate and strong proactive measures and being honest about the risk with its citizens.

Trump in a lie-filled speech at the CPAC conference says: "Everything is under control. I mean, they're very, very cool. They've done it, and they've done it well. Everything is really under control."

Trump again: "Tremendous amounts of supplies are already on hand."

None of these claims are true. There is no hope of a vaccine for the current epidemic. Hopefully there will be one for future coronavirus outbreaks. The US has been far from the "most aggressive" country, thanks largely to Trump's lies and procrastinations. Everything is definitely not "under control." There are life-threatening shortages of critical supplies like masks and ventilators. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would request 30,000 ventilators from FEMA and get only 400. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker requested 4,000 ventilators and only received 450. Some at-risk healthcare workers have been reducing to using homemade masks, scarves and bandanas.

March 2, 2020

Epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell would later say in The New York Times that 90% of US coronavirus deaths could have been avoided if social distancing had begun on March 2.

Researchers at Columbia University would agree, saying that the two-week delay in mitigation, from March 1 to March 15, had multiplied the U.S. death toll by a factor of six. By May 3, the price of that delay was more than 50,000 lives.

But Trump keeps ignoring the real experts. Before a March 2 rally in North Carolina, a TV interviewer asked him whether he was taking more precautions because of the virus. “Probably not so much,” Trump replied. “I just shook hands with a whole lot of people back there.” The next day, he would say it was safe to travel across the country, since “there’s only one hot spot.” On March 5, at a Fox News town hall, he would, “I shake anybody’s hand now. I’m proud of it.” On March 6, while visiting the CDC, when asked about the risks of packing people together at rallies, he said, “It doesn’t bother me at all.” This cavalier attitude toward dangerous rallies would persist for months until Trump finally canceled the Republican National Convention in August, finally admitted he had been wrong all along.

Trump, on a coronavirus vaccine: "I've heard very quick numbers, that of months."

Trump: "We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they're going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon."

Trump continues to lie. Immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has repeatedly said that a vaccine will not be available for a year or more.

Trump again: "We're talking about a much smaller range [than with the flu]."

Not according to medical experts who have been telling the world that the coronavirus is much more lethal than the seasonal flu. And we have vaccines and antibodies that protect most of us from dying from the flu. We have no natural antibodies for the coronavirus and there is no vaccine and no cure. So we can't protect our most vulnerable loved ones: the very young and the very old.

March 3-4, 2020

Trump claims: “The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing.”

Another bald lie. The Obama administration never enacted any changes to the preexisting testing regulations.

March 4, 2020

Trump: "It's very mild!"

Trump: "Some people will have this at a very light level and won't even go to a doctor or hospital, and they'll get better. There are many people like that."

Yes, some Americans will recover. But what about all the ones who won't, thanks to your lies, deception and incompetence? What about the people infected by contact with carriers? One sick person may recover after infecting other people who don't.

In a phone call with Sean Hannity, Trump says he has a "hunch" the World Health Organization's estimated 3.4 percent death rate for those infected with coronavirus is a "false number."

Trump insists that "a very small number of Americans" are infected. He is clearly in denial, or just blatantly lying.

Who should we trust: the WHO's scientists or Trump's wildly inconsistent gut? By April 8 there would be around 425,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, and around 14,000 deaths. That's a 3% fatality rate, which is around 30 times more lethal than ordinary seasonal flu. Granted, the lethality rate is not precise because not all victims have been tested. But then not everyone who gets the flu gets tested either. Also, very unfortunately, not everyone who is going to die has died yet. So we really don't know the exact rate. But it seems safe to say that the experts are right and Trump is, once again wrong. Whatever the number is, it isn't "false" and it is many, many times higher than the death rate of the seasonal flu. And the coronavirus is especially lethal for seniors. According to livescience.com, in China the fatality rate is a staggering 14.8% for patients age 80 and older. And if our hospitals become overwhelmed and can't treat everyone, the death rate could soar. In any case, Trump's cavalier approach to the pandemic is very, very dangerous.

Trump: "We're talking about very small numbers in the United States."

No, we are not talking about very small numbers in the United States, according to the experts, who will quickly prove to be correct.

The House passes an $8.3 billion coronavirus emergency bill. That's a lot of money to spend on a "hoax."

Trump told Sean Hannity: "Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild ... So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better and then, when you do have a death like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent."

So after three deaths in the early stages of the coronavirus, Trump has a "hunch" that people can go back to work because not everyone will die1 He ignores or doesn't understand that people who recover can infect others, including their children, other family members, friends and co-workers. If millions of people get infected, even a small percentage of fatalities can still add up to thousands or hundreds of thousands of death. If Trump is wrong and the experts are correct, the deaths could be in the millions.

March 5, 2020

At a Fox News town hall, Trump says: "It's going to all work out. Everybody has to be calm. It's all going to work out."

Trump continues to paint a rosy picture: "With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths."

The problem is that Trump didn't close the borders fast enough, or seal them tight enough.

March 6, 2020

The stock market is free-falling, which means savvy investors know dark days are coming. There are confirmed coronavirus cases in two dozen states. Washington has declared an emergency after ten people died at a single nursing home. Passengers on a cruise ship are unable to disembark. Music festivals, concert tours and conventions are being canceled. The WHO and other medical experts are warning about the dangers of a global pandemic. So what does Trump do? In addition to pooh-poohing the risk, he spends two days hosting a birthday party for his son's girlfriend and plays golf. A third day on his schedule is unaccounted for. What sort of president takes three days off in the middle of the greatest attack on the US since Pearl Harbor, as Trump himself will say later when the death toll mounts to the skies?

Trump: "We did an interview on Fox last night, a town hall. I think it was very good. And I said, 'Calm. We have to be calm. It'll go away.'"

Trump: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. . . . Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."

Maybe you're full of s**t. The very same day Trump betrayed his abysmal ignorance by saying: "I didn't know people died from the flu."

Trump's grandfather died from the flu!

The ill-informed Trump also said the crisis is "an unforeseen problem" that "came out of nowhere."

More lies. Many medical experts had warned that such a crisis was coming, years in advance.

Vice President Mike Pence announces that 21 people aboard the Grand Princess, a cruise ship being held off the coast of California, have tested positive for coronavirus.

Donald Trump, on whether or not to bring coronavirus patients on the cruise ship to shore: "[My experts] would like to have the people come off. I'd rather have the people stay ... I would rather—because I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

In other words, Trump doesn't want Americans to come home, if the "numbers" will make him look bad. All that matters is how he looks and his reelection chances!

Trump: "Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They're there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful."

Trump: "Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That's what the bottom line is."

More lies. The previous day Vice President Mike Pence had admitted: "We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward." According to William Hanage, a Harvard epidemiologist, "We just twiddled our thumbs as the coronavirus waltzed in." CDC data shows that during February, government labs processed only 352 COVID-19 tests. And some of those test were faulty, as admitted by CDC Director Robert Redfield. In reality, almost no one was getting tested in the US, considering its vast population of 331 million. That's a rate too small to register on my calculator when set to 4 decimals!

A month later, there would still be shortages of tests. And within ten days, on March 16, Trump would personally admit that he lied by saying that people without symptoms should not get tested. Of course that's too late, because people without symptoms can infect others. We needed to maximize testing, not minimize it.

Larry Kudlow: "We stopped it, it was a very early shut down, I would still argue to you that this thing is contained."

Yet another bald-faced lie, or yet another display of unfathomable ignorance. The same day, major events around the United States were canceled, including the SWSX conference, a two-week event that drew more than 417,000 visitors from 106 countries in 2019. Other major events canceled include Miami's Ultra Music Festival, Facebook's F8 Developer Conference and IBM's Think conference.

Trump: "[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."

Another lie. Within a week Trump would cancel rallies in Colorado, Nevada and Wisconsin.

March 7, 2020

Trump tells Sean Hannity: "I'm not concerned at all."

"It came out of China, and we heard about it. And made a good move: We closed it down; we stopped it. Otherwise — the head of CDC said last night that you would have thousands of more problems if we didn't shut it down very early. That was a very early shutdown, which is something we got right."

March 8, 2020

Trump tweets: "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus. We moved VERY early to close borders to certain areas, which was a Godsend. V.P. is doing a great job. The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!"

Trump retweets a story about Surgeon General Jerome Adams playing down the risk of coronavirus for Trump personally.

Italy quarantines around 16 million people in its northern Lombardy region, where more than 230 people have died from the coronavirus. The area sealed off includes Milan and Venice.

March 9, 2020

Trump: "The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, 'The risk is low to the average American.'"

The real experts are not saying the risk is low. They are warning Americans of the very real risks they face.

Trump: "So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!"

We are thinking about the fact that experts say the coronavirus is ten times more lethal than the common flu. Why aren't you?

Trump has gone from not knowing that anyone ever died from the flu, to using flu deaths to excuse his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump: "Good for the consumer, gasoline prices coming down!"

According to Trump, the prices of stocks and gas are more important than human lives.

Ireland cancels its St. Patrick's Day festivities.

March 10, 2020

Trump: "So we just had a great meeting. Tremendous unity in the Republican Party. And we’re working on a lot of different things. We’ve also had some very good updates on the virus. That's working out very smoothly. Tremendous people. It’s a tremendous task force. They have done a great job — not a good job, a great job. As you know, it’s about 600 cases, it’s about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more. But we — we just had a meeting on stimulus, and you’ll be hearing about it soon. But it was a great meeting."

Trump: "And it hit the world. And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it! And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Trump: "It's really working out!"

Trump continues to lie like the conman he is. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains the reality: "The bottom line: It is going to get worse."

Once again, the experts were correct and Trump was dead wrong: so dead wrong that many Americans would die as a result.

March 11, 2020

Trump finally bars travelers from some European countries, but still allows entrance from others, including Great Britain, where Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson will soon contract the coronavirus. Yet another critical mistake by The Donald. In a televised address, Trump acknowledges that travelers from Europe had brought the disease to America. Trump accuses Europe of spreading the "foreign virus" on to the US. He says the EU failed to "restrict travel from China and other hotspots. As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe." Two months later, based on genetic and epidemiological analyses, the CDC would confirm that Trump’s action had come too late, because people arriving from Europe—nearly two million of them in February alone—had already accelerated the spread of the virus in the US.

Trump: "These restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom." [A fatal mistake, among many made by Trump.]

Trump: We will "expeditiously defeat this virus."

Trump: "The virus will not have a chance against us!"

Trump: "We are responding with great speed and professionalism."

Trump: "I think we're going to get through it very well."

Trump: "[For] the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low."

Trump: "If we get rid of the coronavirus problem quickly, we won't need [economic] stimulus."

That's a very big IF. But why all the talk about stocks, gas and stimulus, and no talk at all about the human toll?

Trump: "This is not a financial crisis." [Actually, it is, and only a moron would say otherwise.]

Trump then immediately announces measures that prove there is a financial crisis: "unprecedented" financial relief, increased travel restrictions, locking down nursing homes, tax deferments, $50 billion in additional SBA capital, $200 billion in payroll tax relief, $8.3 billion for the CDC.

Trump insists that testing "has been going very smooth!"

Trump continues to lie. Dr. Anthony Fauci says in a House hearing about coronavirus test kits in the United States, which were initially dogged by technical glitches: "That is a failing. Let's admit it."

CNN's Jim Acosta asks Trump what he would say to Americans who say you are not taking this seriously enough and that some of your statements don't match what health experts are saying. Trump replies: "That's CNN. Fake news."

Fake news, really? The same day the WHO says the coronavirus outbreak "can be characterized as a pandemic." Meanwhile the NBA suspends all basketball games after a Utah Jazz player, Rudy Gobert, tests positive for COVID-19. Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, announce they have tested positive.

Russell Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, doubles down on proposed cuts to health services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite the coronavirus pandemic. Why?

Trump continues to lie: "We're having to fix a problem that, four weeks ago, nobody ever thought would be a problem." Trump would later claim to have always known the pandemic was a pandemic, one of his many incomprehensible lies about the virus.

But Trump had been warned many times by medical experts that such a problem was coming. He ignored the warnings and now Americans are scared to death, panicking without trustable leadership, and dying as a result. Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, refuted Trump: "This was foreseeable, and foreseen, weeks and months ago, and only now is the White House coming out of denial and heading straight into saying it could not have been foreseen. Almost two months ago, experts were saying that the new virus in Wuhan was potentially a global threat. One month ago, experts were saying that it was likely to be pandemic, and the White House's response was that this was under control, despite the fact that the US's lack of testing was demonstrably giving a false picture of the extent of infection."

Trump lies again, saying the health insurance industry has "agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments." In reality, treatment would not be covered without a co-pay, only tests.

Another Trump lie, this one especially dangerous for young people: "[For] the vast majority of Americans the risk is very, very low. Young and healthy people can expect to recover fully and quickly if they should get the virus."

In reality, 30% of American coronavirus cases and 20% of the deaths are people under the age of 65. Younger people are at risk, and many of them are dying. Why would Trump tell such a deadly lie at such a perilous time? White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx would quickly counter that the coronavirus task force was concerned about reports indicating that more young people were becoming seriously ill from coronavirus.

March 12, 2020

Trump: "It's pretty amazing! ... It's gonna go away!"

Trump tweeted: "It's going to go away. ... The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point … when you look at the kind of numbers that you're seeing coming out of other countries, it's pretty amazing when you think of it."

What is truly amazing is that anyone can be so cavalier about human suffering and deaths.

The same day Mike Pence said: "We'll have thousands of more cases." Since Trump's deceitful tweet, the deaths have more than doubled.

Trump attacks the CDC and the Obama administration for his administration's unpreparedness for the coronavirus pandemic. However, it was Obama who created an NSC directorate to prepare for and prevent pandemics. It was Trump who cavalierly disbanded the NSC directorate.

Trump: "We have 'em very heavily tested. If an American's coming back, or anybody's coming back, we're testing. We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested. And if they are positive, and if they're able to get through—because, frankly, if they're not, we're not putting them on planes, if it shows positive…"

This is not true. The experts are telling us that the US is not able to do the testing that needs to be done. One minute Trump is lashing out at the CDC for being unprepared and the next minute he's insisting that things are "tremendous." Which is it?

Major League Baseball suspends spring training and delays the start of the regular season by at least two weeks.

The NHL suspends all hockey games, putting its postseason playoffs and the Stanley Cup in question.

The NCAA cancels both men's and women's college basketball tournaments, known as March Madness, after most conferences had already suspended their postseason tournaments.

March 13, 2020

Trump finally declares a national state of emergency, after all his glib talk about how "smoothly" and "amazingly" things had been going, and how the numbers were "small" and "sure to go down to zero very quickly."

States including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maryland announce plans to close schools due to the coronavirus.

Trump brags: "We'll have the ability to do [tests] in the millions over a very, very quick period of time."

Another lie. The US continues to lag much smaller nations like South Korea in testing. The real experts continue to point out a chronic shortage of tests in the US. The US would not reach one million tests, in a nation of 331 million, until the end of March. That's .3% of the population, three months after pandemic started.

Trump again blames others for his failures: the H1N1 pandemic was “a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”

In reality, President Obama declared a national public health emergency within two weeks of the first case of H1N1 in the US, while Trump failed to do the same for seven weeks. According to epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell, 90% of American coronavirus deaths could have been avoided if Trump had acted by March 2, by which time he had been warned of the danger many times by many sources (including China, which had locked down the original source of the virus, Wuhan, a drastic measure because it has a population of around 11 million souls). Trump has no excuse at this point for inaction that would lead to over 90,000 of the 100,000 American coronavirus deaths by early June, according to the cited experts.

March 14, 2020

The Trump administration's response to the coronavirus in the area of testing lags far beyond other countries, according to reports. The director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, Dr. Ashish Jha, says: "Our estimates are we should be doing 100-150,000 tests a day in the United States. We're not even doing a tenth of that right now."

"It's something that nobody expected," Trump claims.

More lies. "This was foreseeable, and foreseen, weeks and months ago," said epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.

More major sports cancellations and/or suspensions: the English Premier League, the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix, the PGA Tour's Players Championship, and the Boston Marathon.

March 15, 2020

"Take it easy! Relax!" Trump advised anxious shoppers. "We have tremendous control" over the coronavirus.

Trump: "This is a very contagious ... this is a very contagious virus. It's incredible! But it's something that we have tremendous control of."

That, of course, contradicts everything said by the real experts.

Tweety Trump began his press conference by focusing on what really matters: what people are saying about him. He announced that the Federal Reserve was cutting its interest rates to zero: "That's a big step and I'm very happy they did it. And you will not hear anything about me, unless it's about a month or two from now. So I congratulate the Federal Reserve."

Twenty-nine additional states, including New York, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Hawaii, announce school closures.

March 16, 2020

Trump: "I'm a perfect ten!"

Not so perfect: Trump admits that he lied about anyone who wants a test getting a test when he reverses course and says people without the symptoms should not get tested. Of course by then it's too late and other people have probably been infected.

Trump told reporters that he would rate his administration's response to the coronavirus a perfect ten, on a scale of one to ten. Trump takes all the credit for anything positive and none of the blame for anything negative, so he is, in effect, saying that he's perfect.

Trump may have engaged in a rare moment of truthfulness when he admitted that President Obama's pandemic team had been disbanded on purpose: "We broke down the system purposefully." But there was no attempt to rebuild or replace what had been broken down. So when the long-predicted pandemic came, there was no one in the Trump administration in a position to deal with the crisis. Trump's personal ignorance on the subject is self-evident in his quotes on this page. And none of his underlings seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. The Trump administration painted a rosy picture: gas prices were falling, it was a good time to buy stocks, it would all be over very quickly, etc.

Wall Street did not agree, plunging yet again as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3,000 points in a single day.

For a few seconds during a press conference Trump seemed to finally get it, saying: "We have an invisible enemy ... This is a bad one. This is a very bad one." But then he was once again talking about ending the crisis "quickly" and having "a big celebration altogether."

"We don't want everybody taking this test," Trump said. "It's totally unnecessary. And this will pass." But the real experts disagree. The World Health Organization delivered a simple message to all countries: "Test every suspected COVID-19 case," W.H.O. Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with up to two days before they developed symptoms and test those people too."

The United States lags far behind other nations in coronavirus testing, thanks to Trump's lies and incompetence. Rather than admitting his and his administration's failings, Trump gives himself a perfect ten. Meanwhile, Americans are suffering and dying and cannot look to their president for truth or responsible behavior.

March 17, 2020

Trump completely reverses course and now claims that he always knew the coronavirus was a pandemic! This comes after months of Trump saying he wasn't worried at all, that the numbers were small and would quickly drop to zero, that reports of a global crisis were "fake news" and a "hoax," etc.

"This is a pandemic," Trump told reporters. "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

Just the day before, on March 16 in the White House briefing room, Trump had predicted that the outbreak would simply "wash" away this summer: "So it could be right in that period of time where it, I say, wash — it washes through. Other people don't like that term. But where it washes through."

Did Trump change his tune, however inconsistently, because coronavirus cases have now been confirmed at Mar-a-Lago?

According to Politico, Mar-a-Lago has become "a gilded petri dish for a global disease." Is this why Trump suddenly changed his tune from the coronavirus being "fake news" and a "Democratic hoax" to finally admitting what it really is: a pandemic? Apparently Trump is unconcerned about ordinary Americans suffering and dying. But when the crown jewel of his real estate empire is threatened, there is suddenly a note of alarm.

Trump says: "We're asking everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people." Trump insists there was "no shift in tone" from the White House.

More lies. Trump has shifted from saying the numbers were going down to zero to saying we're in deep s**t.

Trump says: "We expect over the next few days to begin setting up 47 of these [drive-through testing labs] in approximately 12 states." Three weeks later only five such labs were operable, and they were limiting tests to first responders and health care workers. And in some cases, only to those with symptoms.

March 18, 2020

Why did Trump keep playing down the coronavirus pandemic? According to The New York Times, he was following the advice of Jared Kushner. Kushner repeatedly advised Trump that the media was exaggerating the severity of the coronavirus outbreak. And so Trump downplayed the threat while accusing the "Fake News Media" and Democrats of "inflaming" the situation. Kushner "privately told Trump what the president then repeated publicly."

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has words of comfort for Americans. Johnson very helpfully pointed out that that "no more than 3.4 percent of our population" is in danger of dying from the coronavirus. Armed with this data, Johnson wants Americans to put things in the proper "perspective." With a population of 331 million, this means we face "only" 11.25 million deaths. We only have to worry about 3 to 4 people out of every hundred we know dying, on average. And if others end up on ventilators or otherwise incapacitated, well some of us will still be able to breathe on our own. So toughen up, Americans, and get some "perspective" thanks to Ron Johnson!

Trump announces, far too late, that he will invoke the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of critical supplies like masks. Why did he wait so long? But Trump will decline to actually use the DPA, saying it was just for "leverage." Thus the shortages would continue, imperiling the health and lives of large numbers of Americans.

March 19, 2020

Bob Woodward was told by Trump on March 19 in a taped phone conversation that "plenty" of young people are susceptible to the coronavirus, and yet Trump would try to force schools to reopen aggressively on his publicly-stated premise that children are immune or "almost immune" to the coronavirus!

"Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old — it's plenty of young people," Trump said.

But for months Trump would falsely tell American parents otherwise. For example, on August 5, even though the CDC had reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children, Trump said during an interview, "If you look at children, children are almost — and I would almost say definitely — but almost immune from this disease." He would add, "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem."

Trump also tells Woodward that he's been deliberately minimizing the threat posed by the outbreak: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Yes, because I don't want to create a panic."

Trump is photographed reading from notes at the daily coronavirus task force press conference where the word "corona" was crossed out and replaced with "Chinese" to described COVID-19. The photograph, taken by a Washington Post photographer, showed the word crossed out in what appeared to be Sharpie and in the president's own handwriting.

The New York Times reports that "Trump's own Department of Health and Human Services ran a series of simulations last year about a pandemic respiratory virus originating in China that ultimately infected 110 million Americans. The exercise 'drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.' Yet there's little evidence of a serious push to increase America's readiness. ... When the coronavirus emerged in China, Trump's instinct was to treat it as a public relations problem, insisting repeatedly that it would 'go away.' South Korea and the United States announced their first coronavirus cases at around the same time; while South Korea ramped up the production of tests, the United States dithered. As Reuters reported, South Korea, a country of around 51 million, has tested 290,000 people. In the United States, a country of 330 million, only 60,000 tests had been conducted as of Tuesday."

California orders a lockdown for 40 million residents. The U.S. Senate unveils a trillion-dollar-plus coronavirus stimulus package. That's a lot of money to spend on "fake news" and a "hoax"!

March 20, 2020

As Chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) received daily briefings about the coronavirus. Publicly he downplayed the danger, saying the US was "better prepared than ever before." Meanwhile, in private Burr unloaded up to $1.72 million in stocks just before they lost huge amounts of market value. According to Forbes the 33 stocks sold by Burr were "in sectors hit hard by the outbreak." Thanks to insider information, Burr and other rich, entitled senators were able to profit while millions of Americans suffered tremendous hits to their retirement savings. Like Trump, these senators knew the truth but lied to the American public, putting their personal interests vastly above the public good. Burr was a vocal opponent of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act and now we know why. Like Trump, he thinks he's above the law and should have special advantages over ordinary Americans. And while their illegal profiting on the misfortunes of other Americans is obscene, what's far worse is that Trump and the senators knew what was coming, but lied to 330 million Americans they had sworn to protect. NPR obtained a recording of Burr warning a group of wealthy constituents about the dire economic impact of the coronavirus and the dangers of traveling, at a time when he and the Trump administration were publicly downplaying the threat. Are only the rich entitled to know the truth? How many citizens will suffer and die because they were not told the truth and given time to prepare for the coming pandemic? No serial killer sent to the electric chair murdered, even remotely, as many people as Trump & Co. undoubtedly will, before it's all over. Lock them up!

Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the same day the Senate Health Committee hosted a private coronavirus briefing given by medical experts who included Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. After the briefing Loeffler and her husband, the chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, would sell 29 stocks valued at up to $3.1 million. Meanwhile on Jan. 28 she lied to the American public, tweeting: "Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on #Coronavirus readiness. Here's the truth: @realDonaldTrump & his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe." Yeah, right. You and your husband had so much confidence in Trump and his administration that you started dumping stocks the minute you heard the truth!

Vultures of a feather, flocking together? Burr and Loeffler sat next to each other during the Senate's impeachment trial in January.

At least two other senators have also been accused of trading on inside information.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo orders all non-essential businesses to keep their workers at home.

March 21, 2020

Trump continues to spew lies and disinformation: vaccines, websites, tests and medical ships are touted as being ready, or nearly ready, when they're not. Trump's lies and exaggerations are repeatedly "walked back" by Mike Pence, other subordinates, and medical experts. According to one senior official, Trump's drive to announce unfinished initiatives created a "need to make good on half-baked promises." The official learned about some initiatives only when the president announced them at the White House podium.

March 22, 2020

Rolling Stone reminds us: "Never forget, Trump played golf as the number of cases surged." Also: "It turns out in a time of crisis a conman is not up for the task."

Shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods? Ron Paul, a former Republican Presidential candidate, recently wrote an article in which he called the coronavirus pandemic a "big hoax." That might come as a surprise to his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who just tested positive for the coronavirus. After years of pandering to a conman, Republicans finally have a reality check they can't ignore. Ironically, Rand Paul was the was the only senator to vote against a bipartisan deal to provide $8 billion in emergency coronavirus funding earlier this month.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who had been in contact with Rand Paul, announced that he would self-quarantine. When Trump was informed of this at a presser, the reptilian president replied, "Gee, that's too bad." Romney was, of course, the only Senate Republican who voted to convict Trump on abuse of power after the Senate impeachment trial. As Seth Meyers noted: "Donald Trump never passes up an opportunity to remind us that he is an awful person."

March 23,2020

Dr. Sejal Hathi of Massachusetts General Hospital rips Trump a new one: "We [doctors] are sick and tired and angry at the indifference of a self-obsessed president and the inaction and ineptitude of his dithering administration."

Trump has a new mantra: "We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself."

For Trump getting reelected president is "job one." If other Americans have to die, after infecting their children, that is a small price to pay for his reelection. They need to go back to work, however prematurely, to help his reelection chances.

March 24, 2020

The wife of an Arizona man who died after ingesting chloroquine phosphate to protect himself from the novel coronavirus urged the public on Monday not to "believe anything that the president says" and rely on doctors instead. The woman, who is in critical care after taking the drug with her husband, explained: "We saw Trump on TV — every channel — and all of his buddies and [they said] that this was safe. ... Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure." (Trump had repeatedly touted chloroquine as a "very powerful" treatment against the coronavirus and had falsely claimed it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.) Asked for her message to the public, the woman told NBC News: "Oh my God, don't take anything. Don't believe anything that the president says and his people ... call your doctor."

Trump said that he wants the country to be "opened up and just raring to go by Easter." Trump said of the Easter deadline (emphasis on "dead"?) ... "I thought it was a beautiful time. A beautiful timeline. Trump's target date to open the nation for business by April 12 — less than three weeks away — was quite obviously driven by sentiment and symbolism, not medical data or logic.

Trump explains his magical thinking: "Easter is a very special day for me. And I see it sort of in that timeline that I'm thinking about. And I say, wouldn't it be great to have all of the churches full?"

The least Christ-like of all American presidents, a serial groper of women's genitals, plays the religion card?

Trump says a longer shutdown would be untenable because suicides “definitely would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.”

Mitch McConnell said the US economy was "ready to soar" thanks to the just-passed coronavirus stimulus plan and, perhaps, a hefty dose of Trumpian wishful thinking.

March 25, 2020

Trump: "Nobody would ever believe a thing like that's possible. Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming, but now we know, and we know it can happen and happen again."

But of course the experts did see it coming, and warned Trump about it, only to have him insist that the risk was "very, very low" and that the virus would "miraculously" disappear, etc.

Trump returns to portraying the coronavirus pandemic as a "hoax" that can be safely ignored, this time starting with his magical timeline of Easter. Trump's motivation is apparent in this tweet: "The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!"

Thus the coronavirus, which started as a next-to-nothing "hoax," then became the pandemic Trump had always seen and recognized, is now back to "hoax" status. Never mind about Americans who may suffer and die, while putting their loved ones at risk, if they return to work too soon. They are not "real people" to Trump! What really matters to Trump is that Trump gets reelected. To do that he needs everyone to work, whether they live or die, and whether or not they infect their loved ones in the process. Get your priorities straight, Americans, and put your Fearless Leader first, as he does Himself! He is completely fearless as far as you and your families are concerned. Now we know why he's imperially called The Donald.

As for the "get back to work" imperative, the Nazis had similar encouragement for slaves to toil regardless of the risks: Arbeit macht frei ("Work makes you free"), which they posted at slave labor camps like Auschwitz. Americans, being a free people, have the right to be safe when they work, or to stay home if they're not. But many Americans look to their president for guidance in such perilous times and unfortunately a large percentage of them believe this deceitful conman despite all the lies he's told. How many Americans will suffer and die, to give Trump a better shot at getting reelected?

March 26, 2020

A Trump attorney confirms that Trump has been "patently false, misleading and deceptive" in a cease-and-desist letter he sends to American TV stations regarding an unflattering campaign ad. "On behalf of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., President Trump's principal campaign committee, this letter notifies you that your station is airing a patently false, misleading, and deceptive advertisement," wrote Alex Cannon, special counsel to Trump's campaign. The ad simply replays Trump's recorded public statements about the coronavirus, in his own voice, saying things like: "The coronavirus ... is their new hoax," and "We have it totally under control," and "One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear," and "People are surprised that I understand it." The ad ends with the self-damning: "No, I don't take responsibility at all." Trump obviously doesn't want to be quoted now that the truth has come out. We are reminded of Trump viciously attacking Megyn Kelly when all she did was quote things he had said publicly about women. Even Trump can't stand to hear how awful he sounds.

Trump talked to two people and decided the numbers are not so bad, really: "Many people have it. I just spoke to two people that had it. They never went to a doctor, they didn't report it." Trump used the fact that some cases are mild to justify his rush to reduce distancing measures and reopen closed businesses. Trump concluded: "The people that actually die, that percentage is much lower than I actually thought." But talking to two people who weren't tested is far from a scientific investigation. Trump's "math" seems to be mostly wishful thinking. But even if he's correct that the fatality rate is lower than projected by experts, if half the US population becomes infected there could still be millions of deaths. The best solution is to vastly reduce the number of new infections, not to engage in wishful thinking and magical math. Is Trump seeing dollar signs while ignoring the human cost?

According to Tone Deaf Trump, "A lot of good things are happening. The mortality rate is, in my opinion, ... way, way down." He said this on a day when more than 200 Americans were reported to have died, with the US having become the world leader in confirmed coronavirus cases.

March 27, 2020

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and heir to the crown Prince Charles both have confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

President Photo-Op announces that he will visit Norfolk to pose and preen while a Navy hospital ship sets sail to aid coronavirus patients.

March 28, 2020

Trump discusses a possible "enforceable" quarantine of the state of New York. Would he use the American military to patrol New York's borders and coasts?

Trump told reporters: "Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it's a hot spot — New York, New Jersey, one or two other places, certain parts of Connecticut, quarantined."

New York has become the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, with over 52,000 confirmed cases and still climbing.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo compared Trump's quarantine proposal to "a declaration of war on states."

Is Trump concerned about his precious Mar-a-Lago? He explained his reasoning: "They're having problems down in Florida. A lot of New Yorkers going down, we don't want that, heavily infected."

March 29, 2020

Trump changes his tune again, now saying that 2.2 million Americans might die if extreme measures are not taken. Returning to normalcy by Easter is now just a discarded "aspiration." Trump's new tune is: "Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won." But of course that's what he did for three months himself.

During a Rose Garden press conference, Trump released a barrage of outright lies, misrepresentations and denials of things he had said previously:

An obvious, flat-out lie: "And as you know, even before this development, we've been doing more tests — tests than any other country, anywhere in the world."

Trump suggest hospitals or medical workers are stealing masks: "Even though this is different, something is going on, and you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000? ... So I think people should check that because there's something going on, whether — it's not — I don't think it's hoarding; I think it's maybe worse than hoarding."

Trump says the states are lying about their needs: "Many of the states are stocked up. Some of them don't admit it, but they have — we have sent just so much — so many things to them and — including ventilators."

David Lurie notes in The Daily Beast that “Trump lies as a matter of habit, but in the midst of the pandemic his lies can kill.”

March 30, 2020

Trump: "It will go away. You know it is going away ... and we will have a great victory."

As the coronavirus threatens to kill more Americans than 9-11 and the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, Mr. Inappropriate boasts that the hair being ruffled by the wind is really his. Trump continues to attack reporters who simply quote what he actually said about the coronavirus, when quicker, more decisive actions could have saved hundreds of thousands or millions of American lives. It seems likely that Trump's failure to act quickly and decisively in the early stages of the pandemic will cause the mobilization to come too late for the peak period of infections, which is rapidly approaching.

A Boston Globe editorial says: "Much of the suffering and death coming was preventable. The president has blood on his hands. ... Catastrophic decisions in the White House have doomed the world's richest country to a season of untold suffering."

Trump blames President Obama: "We inherited a broken test," he told Fox News on Fox and Friends.

Yet another bald lie. The novel coronavirus did not exist when Obama was president. There were no preexisting tests anywhere in the world that predated the Trump administration. All coronavirus tests were created after the new virus was discovered and identified, years after Obama had left office.

March 31, 2020

Trump says the virus will "hopefully" be gone by the end of the month or "hopefully soon after that." Trump also insists that the coronavirus "is going away" when he's asked if his thinking about the coronavirus has evolved.

Once again, Trump engages in wishful thinking while Americans continue to die in increasing numbers. He admits that his thinking has not evolved. He is waiting for the virus to go away magically with warmer weather. But that is not going to happen and the experts never said that it would happen.

For more than two months Trump insisted the numbers were very "low" and were declining rapidly toward zero. He said that all patients were getting better. He said his administration had the coronavirus "totally under control." At this point there are 161,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States—the most in the world—and the numbers are climbing exponentially, more than tripling in one week. But due to the lack of tests, the real numbers are undoubtedly much higher. And with 3,400 coronavirus deaths, all patients are obviously not getting better. And yet Trump refuses to admit his mistakes, much less apologize for them. According to Trump, he's a perfect ten!

April 1, 2020

This is not an April Fool's Day joke: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issues a shelter-at-home directive, saying he only learned within the past 24 hours that people without symptoms could be spreading the disease. How is it possible that Republicans like Trump and Kemp, who are responsible for knowing such things and have teams of high-paid advisers to keep them informed, remain clueless?

Here is something for April Fool's Day:

Big Rocket Man

No one had ever thought of rockets before Trump. He knew about rockets before anyone else. And he knows more about rockets than rocket scientists, who are amazed at how much he knows. It must be a natural gift! Rockets are amazing and beautiful, even when they kill people (which is nothing to worry about, because more people die from the flu). Trump will claim all the credit for everyone saved by rockets, theoretically, while accepting absolutely no responsibility for anyone who actually dies if he fails to protect the nation from incoming missiles, because that's what a Great Leader like Trump does.―Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

April 2, 2020

Trump says scarves can be "better" than masks. The CDC says scarves are a last resort.

The CDC recommends that Americans wear masks when they go outside. Trump refuses to set a good example and wear a mask. How many lives might he save by setting a good example? How many Americans will emulate Trump and die as a result, while infecting others? Even as Trump announced a new federal recommendation that Americans wear masks in public, he immediately undermined the simple and sane advice by saying: "I am choosing not to do it."

Trump says he cut off Europe "very early." That's two lies in one because he didn't cut off any European countries until March 11, a delay of two-and-a-half months. By that time, New York had already become a hot zone due, no doubt, in large part to people arriving with the virus. New York has the most traffic with the outside world and now it has the most coronavirus cases. Furthermore, Trump didn't cut off all Europe. For instance, he didn't cut off Great Britain. Now Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson are infected. How smart was that decision?

April 3, 2020

Trump: "I said it's going away, and it is going away."

Except, of course, that it isn't going away, but getting worse and worse. Other nations will flatten their coronavirus curves, including China where the virus originated, but thanks to Trump's denial, the US will become the virus's global epicenter.

During a press briefing, Trump admits that he had been aware of the danger of a pandemic: "I always knew that pandemics are one of the worst things that could happen." And yet in three years as president he had done nothing to prepare for a pandemic and had, in fact, cut money for pandemic preparedness from the budget. Why? He explained: "I'm a businessperson. I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them." But savvy businessmen do invest money in insurance and disaster prevention. At other times Trump would claim that he was "too busy" even though he spent around a third of his time playing golf. In May, when ABC’s David Muir asked him, “What did you do when you became president to restock those cupboards that you say were bare?” Trump's lame answer was, "I have a lot of things going on."

Trump's latest game plan is quite obvious: He will claim all credit for everything good that happens, while blaming governors, reporters, the media, China, people with darker skin, liberals, Democrats and the Obama administration for everything that goes wrong.

Medical experts have been recommending a national lockdown. Trump wants to limit lockdowns to hot spots like New York. But new hot spots keep popping up. Each new hot spot reduces the number of ventilators that could go to the hardest-hit areas. Once again the experts are correct. Once again Typhoid Don is wrong. Trump has been behind the coronavirus curve for four months. If he had listened to the experts from day one, and followed their advice, how many lives would have been saved?

Trump continues to lead from behind while shirking as much responsibility as possible. For instance, while American hospitals face critical, life-threatening shortages of medical equipment and gear, the Trump administration rewrote the federal government's stated mission for its stockpile of medical supplies. Where the federal government once said the stockpile "ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them the most," the revised version says its purpose is merely to "supplement state and local supplies." More Trumpian blame-shifting.

April 5, 2020

Governors continue to warn about test shortages a month after Trump boasted, "Anybody that wants a test can get a test!"

While he keeps insisting publicly that the coronavirus is "going away," Trump tells Woodward in a recorded call, "It's a horrible thing. It's unbelievable."

April 6, 2020

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson enters an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) with a persistent cough and fever.

US deaths pass 10,500 and continue to climb.

A survey of hospitals shows healthcare workers are experiencing shortages of tests, masks, face shields, ventilators and staff. Trump rejects the results of the report, compiled by the Inspector General of Health and Human Services, suggesting it was political.

April 7, 2020

Trump: "I was right ... it did go, it will go away."

Two trillion dollars is a LOT of money. Trump replaces Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon watchdog in charge of monitoring the coronavirus relief funds. Will the orange fox be "guarding" the hens? House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney accused Trump of engaging in "an assault against independent Inspectors General since last Friday in order to undermine oversight of his chaotic and deficient response to the coronavirus crisis."

The New York Times reports that Trump, who has been publicly and lavishly praising hydroxychloroquine as a miracle "cure" for COVID-19 despite the lack of any scientific evidence and rebuttals by medical experts, has a financial stake in its manufacturer. The Times report says the president's family trusts all have investments in a mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi, the manufacturer of Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Associates of the president, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have also been linked to the pharmaceutical firm.

Later tests would show that coronavirus death rates rose and more than doubled with hydroxychloroquine.

April 8, 2020

According to a Civiqs poll, 40% of Republicans are, astonishingly, "not concerned" about the coronavirus and 45% are still leaving their homes. According to a Monmouth University poll, 40% of Republicans trust Trump and Fox News equally. Since Trump and Fox News have continually depicted the coronavirus as "fake news" and a "liberal hoax" and not something to be all that concerned about, the two polls seem to suggest that people who believe Trump and Fox News are probably the ones who are not concerned.

April 9, 2020

Today marks the 100th day since since the first case of Covid-19 was reported to the World Health Organization.

Trump knows what is really important: his ratings. He tweeted: "The Wall Street Journal always 'forgets' to mention that the ratings for the White House Press Briefings are 'through the roof'" on a day when 799 people died in New York alone.

Trump's new White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, recently predicted that thanks to Trump "we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here."

Genetic research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia. This is according to Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review. How many lives could Trump have saved if he had shut down all travel from Europe earlier?

April 10, 2020

During a press briefing, Vice President Mike Pence refuses to say if there are enough coronavirus tests currently available to reopen the country. More than a month prior, on March 6, Trump had said: "Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That's what the bottom line is." But many healthcare workers who are risking their lives on the frontlines still can't get tested and are putting their families in peril as a result.

In perhaps the most mind-boggling statistic we have ever seen, according to a just-concluded Civiqs poll the majority of Republicans do not believe that the economy is getting worse with the nation under lockdown! A stunning 54% of Republicans do not believe the economy is getting worse. That may change when they get their paychecks, or don't get one at all ...

April 11, 2020

When asked what metrics he would use to determine when to reopen the country, Trump gave a disturbing answer: He pointed to his head. "That's my metrics," he said. "I'm going to have to make a decision and I only hope to God that it's the right decision. But I would say without question it's the biggest decision I've ever had to make."

That illogical, lie-filled head is going to decide our fates?

April 12, 2020

Trump fueled speculation about the future of Dr. Anthony Fauci when he retweeted a conservative who called for the top infectious disease specialist to be fired after he told CNN that lives could have been saved if the Trump administration had acted faster to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

In Trump's dumbed-down administration, no one is allowed to tell the truth if the truth makes Trump look less than perfect.

April 13, 2020

In a recorded phone call, Trump tells Bob Woodward, "It's so easily transmissible, you wouldn't even believe it." And yet with chronic shortages of masks and test, Trump is trying to force the country to reopen appgressively.

"The president of the United States calls the shots," Trump said. "They [the governors] can't do anything without the approval of the president of the United States."

Trump claims all the authority but none of the responsibility.

Trump said there was a "perfect" call with the governors and "Nobody's asking for ventilators!"

Trump insists that "everything we did was right." He still gives himself and his administration a perfect ten. But all the world knows better.

Trump said: "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that's the way it's got to be."

So throw out the Constitution, separation of powers, state rights and individual rights. What Trump says, goes.

April 14, 2020

Trump continues to lie on a daily basis. For instance, "I don't talk about China's transparency," Trump responded. "You know, if I'm so good to China, how come I was the only person, the only leader of a country, that closed our borders tightly against China?"

The truth is that 38 nations implemented travel restrictions on China before or at the same time as the US. Another 12 nations acted before the US, but with narrower restrictions. So Trump was far from a first responder. And he didn't shut down our borders all that tightly, since 40,000 people were allowed to enter from China and our airports remained open to the primary source of American infections. According to geneticists who have decoded the coronavirus genome, the primary source of New York infections was Europe. More than obviously, Trump waited far too long to restrict travel from Europe, and when he acted belatedly he still failed to restrict travel with Great Britain and other countries — picking and choosing here and there. Now Prince Charles and Prime Minister are infected, so how "smart" was that Trump decision and how "tight" was his border security in a time of crisis? And Trump did praise China's transparency in the early going, while heaping praise on China's leadership.

April 15, 2020

Trump says he's suspending U.S. funding for the World Health Organization. He said the agency has "mismanaged" the pandemic, has been slow to respond to the crisis, and is "China-centric."

It sounds as if Trump is describing himself. Trump praised China's "transparency" and the actions of its leadership. Trump believed China over his own intelligence officers and medical experts. He allowed 400,000 people to enter the US from China before travel restrictions were imposed, and another 40,000 travelers thereafter. Trump invariably sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

April 16, 2020

Trump told governors on a conference call that he wants to begin to reopen the U.S. economy on May 1. "You states with beautifully low numbers, let's get your states open and get back to work," Trump said, according to one person on the call and one person familiar with the call.

"Beautifully low!" Who talks like that? Only Trump.

Trump announces that he will "authorize" governors to engage in a "powerful … a very powerful" reopening plan.

Apparently Trump has never read the Constitution, or wants to junk it. He has no power to "authorize" powers the Constitution has placed under the auspices of the states.

April 17, 2020

A day after pompously "authorizing" governors to manage the coronavirus precautions in their respective states, Trump undermines them by calling for his followers to protest in states with Democratic governors. He tweets: "LIBERATE MICHIGAN! ... LIBERATE MINNESOTA! ... LIBERATE VIRGINIA!" He even invokes the Second Amendment, which has nothing to do with the coronavirus, as if inviting his supporters to engage in armed marches, shades of Mussolini!

Apparently Trump is worried about losing the 2020 election and will risk a new Civil War by more deeply dividing the nation in a time of crisis. And he expressed no concern that people attending protests he encouraged might become infected.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said Trump's tweets "encourage illegal and dangerous acts" and said he was "putting millions of people in danger of contracting Covid-19." Inslee added: "His unhinged rantings and calls for people to 'liberate' states could also lead to violence. We've seen it before."

"This will be regarded as the worst public health disaster in America in a century," said Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. "The root cause of the disaster was the lack of readiness to understand where, how and when the disease was spreading. ... We now know there will be well over 100,000 deaths. A vast majority of those will have been unnecessarily lost because of the lack of preparedness of the United States. As a leader, Trump has to accept responsibility, which of course he won't."

April 18, 2020

Trump continues to lie to the American public, claiming that he "inherited" faulty tests. There were no coronavirus tests prior to the appearance of the disease on his watch, so he didn't "inherit" a single faulty coronavirus test. Rather, his administration declined to use coronavirus tests created by the WHO, and went with tests created by the CDC, an organization under his aegis. The sane decision would have been to use the WHO tests until the CDC tests had been verified as accurate. But the Trump administration is not known for being sane, considering actual facts, or employing logic. Now Americans are dying as a result, while Trump tries to rewrite history to favor himself, as always.

Trump continues to lie about the availability of tests, claiming the US has "tremendous capacity" and making it sound as if only Democratic governors are complaining, while for some inexplicable reason they refuse to use tests that are readily available! But a Republican governor, Larry Hogan of Maryland, said: "This has been the Number One stumbling block in America, the lack of availability of testing, and you really can't get to any point where you can reopen the country until, not just in my state, but across the country, until we can do much, much larger-scale testing." Hogan later told CNN that "to try and push this off, to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, [that] somehow we aren't doing our job, is just absolutely false." Another Republican governor, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, agreed, saying it had been a "challenge" to get all the supplies needed to conduct tests, even in his less populous state. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, also a Republican, said he could "probably double, maybe even triple testing in Ohio virtually overnight," with more reagents. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said claims by Trump and Pence that there were enough tests for all states to open back up were "delusional." Northam told CNN: "We've been fighting for testing, it's not a straightforward test. We don't even have enough swabs, believe it or not."

The following day Trump mocked such complaints when he appeared in the briefing room with a single swab he opened with a theatrical flourish, saying: "Reagents and swabs are so easy to get!" But once again Trump was lying because he invoked the Defense Production Act to increase production of swabs by 20 million per month. This move once again raised the question of why Trump leads from behind, when he leads at all. Medical experts and professionals had been warning about shortages of critical supplies for months.

Trump continues to use the excuse that he inherited a "bare cupboard" of medical supplies. But he had three years to restock the cupboard and did nothing until it was too late. Once again Trump refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever for doing his job.

April 19, 2020

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio asks Trump point-blank: "Are you telling New York City to drop dead?" The mayor added: "You are failing to protect the very people you grew up around."

Trump says: "It's not the same thing as a flu at all."

But on Feb. 26 he said: "This is a flu." And on multiple occasions Trump made the common seasonal flu sound much worse than the coronavirus. That was never true, because many Americans have natural antibodies for the flu and there are vaccines. People who want to be protected from the flu can protect themselves and their families. The coronavirus was always different because we don't have natural antibodies for it and there are no vaccines.

Trump again: "We don't want to close anything. We're not going to be closing. But we're going to be doing it beautifully, systematically."

If Trump is not going to be closing anything, this means he is going to systematically start opening things, as he has been saying and suggesting. But is there anything "beautiful" about exposing millions of Americans and their children to the coronavirus? At best, it will be a horrible gamble with multitudes of lives at risk. At worst, the coronavirus could kill hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans. Does anyone beside Trump see anything "beautiful" in any possible scenario?

David Frum, a conservative writer who is not fooled by Trumpian propaganda, recently compared Trump's response to the pandemic to Russia's response to the Chernobyl disaster. Rather than admitting the truth about what happened and why, which would have exposed their negligence and incompetence, Russia's leaders decided to sacrifice the lives of multitudes of commoners in order to preserve their positions of power in a heartless regime. They were leaders without decency, as is The Donald. What motivates Trump today is not the lives and health of ordinary Americans, but his reelection chances. By reopening segments of the U.S. economy, however prematurely, Trump hopes to "goose" the stock market and keep the favor of his rich patrons. If there is positive progress before November 2020, Trump may win a second term. It's a calculated gamble with other people's lives. That's a risk Trump is more than willing to take, just as his strongman heroes have always been willing to let other people die when it benefits them.

In his article Frum pointed out that rich people will be working safely from their homes during the reopening: "If the reopening starts in May, it will be phased in, not by medical advice, but by the hard grammar of wealth and poverty: poorest first, richest last." The upper class will protect themselves and their children by working from home, teleconferencing, having necessities and luxuries delivered, etc. As Frum pointed out, "The coronavirus as Americans know it is not an equal-opportunity killer." A staggering 27% of the deaths have been those of African-Americans. Low-paid grocery workers living from paycheck to paycheck are particularly at risk. The elderly are particularly at risk.

Less-well-off people will be Trump's and the GOP's sacrificial lambs. Governors who try to protect them, especially Democratic governors, will be accused of mutiny, treason, communism, etc.

April 20, 2020

Trump says he is "hearing" that coronavirus deaths may be limited to 50,000 to 60,000. He is not hearing those numbers from the experts, whose estimates range from 100,000 to 240,000 deaths if the US does the right things, such as social distancing. If those right things are not done or are stopped too soon, the death toll could be vastly higher.

Dr. Deborah Birx would later tell Fox News host Chris Wallace that "our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other how to social distance."

Trump, a false "profit" wearing rose-colored glasses, would see his ludicrous predictions eclipsed within a few weeks.

April 21, 2020

Trump repeatedly touted and lavishly praising hydroxychloroquine as a miracle "cure" for COVID-19 despite the lack of any scientific evidence and rebuttals by medical experts. It turned out that he and his family have a financial interest in its manufacturer, Sanofi.

Later tests would show that coronavirus death rates rose and more than doubled with hydroxychloroquine.

April 22, 2020

Trump continues to insist that protesters he's encouraged to assemble are following social distance guidelines, but easily available photos and video prove otherwise.

Trump also lied when he accused Harvard of taking money meant for small businesses. The only money Harvard received was from the CARES Act coronavirus relief package through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. That money goes to students in the form of emergency financial aid grants for "expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus."

Once again Trump demonstrates that he is clueless or making up s**t about people and institutions who don't buy the propaganda he's selling.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, in a Washington Post interview warns that we need to prepare for a second coronavirus wave this winter as well as the common flu. Trump has repeatedly insisted that the coronavirus will miraculously vanish with the arrival of warmer weather. So far Trump has been a false prophet. But even if cases go down during the summer, which remains to be seen, Americans are not out of the woods, according to Redfield. His prognosis did not go over well with Trump and his rose-colored glasses crowd. After CNN cited the Post interview, Trump tweeted "CDC Director was totally misquoted by Fake News @CNN on Covid 19. He will be putting out a statement." Redfield did issue a statement: "I'm accurately quoted in The Washington Post."

One again the truth trumps Trump's lies.

Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and removed as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response. Why? Dr. Bright said he was removed from his post after he pressed for rigorous vetting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug enthusiastically touted by Trump as a coronavirus miracle cure. Dr. Bright accused the Trump administration of putting "politics and cronyism ahead of science." In a scorching statement, Dr. Bright assailed the leadership at the health department, saying he was pressured to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several "potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections" and repeatedly described by the president as a potential "game changer" in the fight against the virus.

April 23, 2020

After repeatedly and enthusiastically promoting hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure, Trump now denies that he ever did: "I haven't at all."

Trump also said his administration "started with a broken test" without explaining that the faulty initial test was created during his presidency, this year. There were no preexisting tests for coronavirus, before the current outbreak, because the virus did not exist to be tested for.

Trump is now touting sunlight and injecting disinfectants into patients' lungs as potential treatments!

Trump asked coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx "to speak to the medical doctors to see if there's any way that you can apply light and heat to cure, you know, if you could." Trump then asked Birx if she "ever heard of the heat and the light" having an impact on viruses. She responded, "Not as a treatment," before Trump asked her again to look into it.

"This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it's dangerous, Dr. Vin Gupta told NBC News. "It's a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves."

We all know that sunlight does not cure the common cold or seasonal flu, which are members of the same viral family. Florida gets more than its share of sun, but has been hit hard by the coronavirus, as have some of the sunnier, hotter countries like Iran and Italy. Heat and light may inhibit the virus outside the body, but once it gets inside, it can obviously thrive in temperatures 98.6 degrees and higher, since patients who develop fevers often die.

This what we get when a six-times-bankrupt real estate salesman who believes his own false press clippings becomes president. Trump thinks he's smarter than his generals, intelligence officers and medical experts. But every time he opens his mouth, he proves otherwise.

April 24, 2020

Has Trump gone too far even for his most ardent followers, with his idea about injecting deadly disinfectants into coronavirus patients? According to Axios, four sources say Trump now plans to "pare back" his coronavirus press conferences. Next week, "he may stop appearing daily and make shorter appearances when he does." This came after Trump turned heel and stalked out as reporters shouted questions in vain during the Friday coronavirus taskforce briefing.

Hillary Clinton tweeted: "Please don't poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea." Joe Biden tweeted: "I can't believe I have to say this, but please don't drink bleach."

Calls to New York City's Poison Control Center rose after Trump's absurd but dangerous suggestion. After Trump's Thursday press conference, within 24 hours the center reported 30 cases of residents who had ingested bleach or other household disinfectants.

When asked whether Trump is a different person because of the virus, Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's former communications director, said: "No way. This guy hasn't changed one iota." Scaramucci said the one thing that has stayed consistent with Trump is what he cares about most: himself. "There's only one thing that he's concerned about and you know what that is? It's 'TRUMP.' When he does a news search, he's searching 'TRUMP.' He doesn't search 'USA,' he searches 'TRUMP."

Vice President Mike Pence told Geraldo Rivera, “I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.” This was just after the United States had passed 50,000 coronavirus deaths. By the end of the Memorial Day weekend, the death toll would be over 100,000 and still climbing.

April 26, 2020

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, points out that in "a press conference about something as serious as this worldwide pandemic" the president should communicate "very clearly on the facts" and avoid "misinformation" and just saying "something that pops in your head."

Such as injecting lethal disinfectants, perhaps?

According to a study published by The New York Times, Trump has praised himself around 600 times while discoursing on the coronavirus, with his self-congratulations often being "predicated on exaggerations and falsehoods." Trump has blamed others over 100 times, while never taking an iota of responsibility for his many egregious errors. When Trump is quoted by reporters with things he said that are in the public record, he attacks them and/or accuses them of being "mean" and "unfair," like a three-year-old in need of serious nap time.

April 27, 2020

In an internal memo dated April 17 the National Republican Senatorial Committee advised its candidates to distance themselves from Trump on questions about the pandemic: "Don't defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban, attack China." According to reports, Trump went ballistic, demanding complete fealty to himself, like a mob boss, and the NRSC backed down. But the concern of Republicans over how Trump has behaved during the pandemic are obvious. Is "blame China" the best they can do, really?

It was also reported that Brad Parscale and other members of the White House Mafia expressed displeasure with the memo's wistful wish that "everyone acted earlier" because it implies that Trump dragged his feet. Which of course he did, repeatedly. But no one in the GOP is allowed to criticize Trump, as in a mob family.

April 28, 2020

Trump: "This is gonna go away."

According to The New York Times, coronavirus deaths (nearly 60,000 in late April) appear to be understated by around 9,000 based on comparisons of normal death rates to those during the pandemic. Deaths are being underreported due to a variety of factors which include: people dying without being tested, lag times between deaths and the causes of the deaths being reported to the CDC, and people not going to the hospital out of fear of the coronavirus and dying from otherwise treatable problems such as heart conditions.

Trump resumes his coronavirus briefings by taking all the credit: "I built the greatest economy in the history of the world!"

No, you didn't.

Trump continues to deny any responsibility for anything that goes wrong, including tens of thousands of deaths that could have been prevented if he had acted sooner. When Trump was asked: "If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died over the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?" he fell back on his mantra of: "I think we've made a lot of good decisions" (repeated twice) and "I think we've done a great job."

But just imagine what Trump and his Republican cronies would be saying today if Barack Obama had been the president fiddling like Nero while his nation burned.

April 29, 2020

Trump: "It's gonna go. It's gonna leave. It's gonna be gone."

Trump has said repeatedly for months that the coronavirus is just "gonna go away." He said it would go away with no more than 15 cases. He said it would go away in a few days. He said it would go away "miraculously" with warmer weather. He said it would go away by the end of the month, in March. A month later, he is still saying it is "gonna go away" like a broken record.

As American coronavirus deaths eclipsed those of the Vietnam War in a little over a month ...

Trump at a televised White House meeting with business leaders: “We think we really have crossed a big boundary and much better days are ahead!”
“We did all the right moves!” Trump bragged.
“I often say I see the light at the end of the tunnel very strongly!” Trump crowed.
Jared Kushner told Fox News: “The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story!”

April 31, 2020

Trump claims to have "evidence" that gives him a "high degree of confidence" that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. When asked the source of his "high degree of confidence," Trump, who recently claimed that the American president has unlimited authority, said: "I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that."

American intelligence does not confirm Trump's conspiracy theory.

The WHO discredits Trump's latest conspiracy theory and fake news: "All available evidence to date suggests that the virus has a natural animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus."

May 1, 2020

Trump blocks Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the first head of the White House coronavirus task force, from testifying before a congress subcommittee.

Dr. Fauci is a straight shooter admired by the majority of Americans in recent polls. Of course Trump doesn't want the real truth to come out, so of course he wants to prevent Dr. Fauci from testify.

Madonna announces that she's tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, joining Prince Charles, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson, Canadian first lady Sophie Trudeau, Kevin Durant, Pink, Spanish opera star Placido Domingo, Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, singer and former Mick Jagger flame Marianne Faithfull, and Tom Hanks as some of the best-known people to have contracted the disease. Chris Cuomo's wife and son have also tested positive. We hope everyone pulls through and send them our prayers and best wishes. Unfortunately, Lord Bath and John Prine died after contracting COVID-19.

May 2, 2020

When George W. Bush calls for national unity and an end to partisanship in the war against the coronavirus, Trump peevishly attacks the former president for not defending him during his impeachment trial. Once again, Trump puts his selfish personal interests above those of the 1.2 million Americans who have contracted COVID-19 and the 68,000 who have already died, with no end in sight. Trump's personal saga pales in comparison to those numbers, but not to Trump, who continues to brag about his hair being real, his TV ratings compared to The Bachelor, his political polls going up slightly, etc., while the nation burns with fever and millions of Americans are now jobless. If Trump is a "wartime" president, he left the borders, seaports and airports open to the enemy and now refuses to admit his mistakes or take any responsibility for them.

Trump is a garbage dump trying to persuade us he's a tropical paradise.

May 3, 2020

Trump claims he's being treated "worse" than any other American president: "I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there," Trump said from his perch on a high-backed stool, pointing at a marble statue of Abraham Lincoln. "They always said, ‘Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln,’" Trump continued. "I believe I am treated worse."

The southern states seceded when Lincoln was elected. The Civil War was fought over his election. More than 600,000 people died, still by far the highest death toll in any American war. Lincoln was assassinated.

Little Donnie Martyr needs brush up on his history, evidently.

May 4, 2020

According to The New York Times, "An internal Trump administration report expects about 200,000 daily cases by June." That means daily cases are projected to go up eightfold. The report also predicts 3,000 daily deaths by June 1 The White House bars coronavirus task force officials from testifying to Congress without approval. Trump has repeatedly downplayed the risk and wildly underestimated the number of cases and deaths. How is that not an impeachable offense? How is not murder, ignorance being no excuse for far less privileged citizens than Trump? Trump's lies, actions and failures to act are killing Americans in ever-increasing, staggering numbers.

May 5: 2020

Despite Trump continually downplaying the number of coronavirus deaths, they continue to increase exponentially. First Trump said everything was "totally under control," that there were only 15 cases and everyone was recovering, and that the number would quickly go down to zero. Then for months he made the coronavirus seem like "no biggie" compared to the seasonal flu. More recently he predicted "only" 50,000 to 60,000 deaths. Both his low-end and high-end numbers were eclipsed within a matter of weeks. Nearly 60,000 Americans with COVID-19 died in a single month, April. And the daily death rate was still rising in early May. Now even as New York City may be on the downside of its coronavirus curve, thanks to serious actions taken by serious leaders who listened to the experts, the coronavirus is spreading like wildfire through rural areas in red states where people believe Trump and Fox News while complaining bitterly about the "mainstream media." Unfortunately for them, the coronavirus may go where people make themselves easy pickings. Trump has persuaded millions of Americans that the coronavirus is a "hoax" or far less dangerous than it actually is. Many of them are walking around defiantly in close quarters, without masks, talking about freedom. But freedom is an ideal, and ideals have to be tempered by common sense. We have the freedom to drive our cars, but not over 100 mph while drunk. Trump is in large part responsible for creating a nation where freedom trumps responsibility, and it doesn't help that he never accepts any responsibility for his mistakes.

May 6, 2020

One of Trump's personal valets, a member of the US Navy, has tested positive for the coronavirus.

According to a CNN source, the Trump administration has rejected the CDC's 17-page recommendations for reopening the country for business as safely as possible. The CDC had rushed to produce the guidelines after they were requested by a top Trump medical adviser, Dr. Deborah Birx. "We are used to dealing with a White House that asks for things and then chaos ensues. A team of people at the CDC spent innumerable hours in response to an ask from Debbie Birx," said the source.

Why were the guidelines rejected in total? Here's a big clue, straight from the mouth of Trump: "I see the new normal being what it was three months ago. I think we want to go back to where it was," Trump said at a meeting with representatives from the restaurant and hospitality industries. "I want to go back to where it was, that's where we're going to be."

Trump continues to live in la-la land, ignoring the advice of the medical experts who want to protect the country from disaster. Trump will continue to cater his big-money cronies, regardless of the risks ordinary Americans will be subjected to.

May 7, 2020

A Mike Pence staffer tests positive for the coronavirus. The Pence staffer is his press secretary Katie Miller, the wife of Trump's senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller. Katie Miller was photographed speaking to reporters the previous day, sans a mask. According to reports, most people in the White House are not wearing masks, including of course Trump himself. Trump has set a dangerous precedent for the people closest to him.

The US unemployment rate surges to 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression.

Trump tells Fox News: “Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon.”

Trump also has some very expensive swampland he'll gladly sell you.

Meanwhile, Trump wants to paint his nonfunctional wall black, at a staggering cost, on the theory that it will be too hot to touch. Apparently Trump has never heard of an obscure thing called "night."

May 8, 2020

Trump: "I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: this is gonna go away without a vaccine."

Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University epidemiologist, said what many Americans have been thinking: What Trump is doing — and not doing, when he rejects the advice of medical experts — amounts to criminal negligence. Gonsalves tweeted: "How many people will die this summer, before Election Day? What proportion of the deaths will be among African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color? This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?"

May 9, 2020

Dr. Rick Bright has filed a formal whistle-blower complaint which accuses Robert Kadlec and other Trump administration officials of cronyism and putting politics ahead of science.

May 11, 2020

Trump once again dons his rose-colored glasses and, as the death toll moves inexorably toward 100,000, tweets: "Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!"

The real experts have said the daily death rate will continue to climb, meaning 100,000 coronavirus deaths probably can't be avoided. And due to the lack of tests, the actual numbers are even higher.

Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans have not "felt the urgency of acting immediately.” He says this with 36 million Americans unemployed, many of them living paycheck to paycheck, and with a staggering death toll that continues to rise inexorably to 100,000 with no end in sight. What sort of evidence do nearsighted, lethargic Senate Republicans like Mitch "Last Ditch" McCon-Hell need?

May 12, 2020

According to a new CNN poll, 62% of Americans don't trust Trump on the coronavirus. That isn't a surprise, since Trump has lied about the coronavirus for months. What is surprising is that 36% of Americans say they trust the information about the coronavirus they receive from Trump. It's scary to know a third of the American public is that gullible!

Dr. Anthony Fauci warns the nation about the dangers of reopening the country prematurely, pointing out that things could get worse rather than better.

Trump once again ignores the experts to claim victory for himself and his administration: "We have met the moment and we have prevailed!" We are reminded of George W. Bush crowing "Mission accomplished!" prematurely during the war in Iraq. Bush also used the word "prevailed" in his speech: "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed!" Of course that was very far from the truth. In any case, Trump continued to sound like a giddy schoolboy: "We will revive our economy, and we will transition into greatness!" Trump, a false "profit" if there ever was one, vowed that the US economy will quickly recover in quarters three and four of 2020, and will be better than ever in 2021. But the stock market remains severely depressed, so the smart money is not betting on Trump and his election propaganda.

Trump would later try to walk back his "prevailed" mumbo-jumbo, by saying he was talking about tests. But it is clear that he was talking about the big picture because he told reporters: "Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!"

Of course that isn't true because the daily death counts are going up, not down, as the coronavirus reaches more and more rural areas where the danger is high due to lack of healthcare facilities. Thanks to Republicans and their disdain for Obamacare and other forms of aid for the poor, many rural hospitals have closed or teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, just when they are needed most. Trump and his cronies continue to kill Americans while crowing about their accomplishments.

May 14, 2020

Trump says testing is "overrated" and claims that "If we didn't do any testing, we would have very few cases."

The experts say testing is an absolute necessity, if we want to reopen closed states safely. But higher case and death counts are bad for Trump's reelection chances. Apparently, he would rather have Americans die in vast numbers rather than know the truth, if the truth hurts his campaign. Whatever happened to JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you?" According to Trump, all that matters is what the country can do for him, including citizens dying quietly in record numbers so that he can remain its kingpin.

Dr. Rick Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint after being removed from his position as the head of BARDA, the agency in charge of pandemic response, testified for nearly four hours before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's health subcommittee. Bright sternly criticized the Trump administration's coronavirus response and urged lawmakers to listen to scientists in order to prevent "unprecedented illness and fatalities." Bright noted the Trump administration's lack of a "comprehensive strategy" and said there is still no "master, coordinated plan" for dealing with the pandemic. Bright warned that "Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history." Dr. Bright had warned higher-ups that the supply chain for masks and other personal protective equipment was "diminishing rapidly" in January, but his warnings went unheeded. Bright said he "pushed" that warning "to the highest levels" he could at Health and Human Services but received "no response." Rather, he said, "I was met with indifference, saying they were either too busy, they didn't have a plan, they didn't know who was responsible for procuring those [supplies] ... A number of excuses, but never any action."

And the same is true for the man at the top, Trump, who never accepts any responsibility for doing his job and spends most of his non-golf and non-TV time blaming others and attacking people who simply quote what he said himself.

May 15, 2020

Trump: "It'll go away. At some point it'll go away."

The coronavirus has now killed more Americans than the combined combat deaths of Americans in the Vietnam War, Gulf War, Afghanistan War and Iraq War. But Trump is still in broken record mode. He's been saying that the virus will just "go away" for months. It's not going away, it's getting worse and worse for Americans while other nations are doing much better in their battles against the deadly disease.

May 16, 2020

Eric Trump continues to insist that the coronavirus pandemic is a political hoax: "They will milk it every single day between now and November 3rd and, guess what, after November 3rd, coronavirus will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen!"

Yeah, right, Brainiac. You've got it all figured out! At the time Brain Drain Eric said this, the US had over 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, with over 90,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths, and many more unconfirmed due to chronic shortages of tests. There were more than 36 million unemployed Americans, a figure that threatens the nation and the world with another Great Depression. There is no "hoax" except your family "leading" our country at such a perilous time.

As ex-President Barack Obama told graduates during a virtual commencement address: "This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many folks in charge know what they're doing."

To confirm what President Obama said, Trump announces that he is taking hydroxychloroquine! Nancy Pelosi immediately points out that the anti-malaria drug can be very dangerous for "morbidly obese" men like Trump.

May 19, 2020

Annie Glenn, the widow of worl-renowned astronaut and former senator John Glenn, died Tuesday from complications of COVID-19.

According to Wikipedia, American combat deaths for the Korean War (33,686), Vietnam War (47,424), Gulf War (149), the Afghanistan War (1,833) and the Iraq War (3,836) combined are under 90,000. The coronavirus has now killed more Americans than all those terrible events together, and the death toll continues to rise. Trump calls himself a "wartime president" but in reality he gave our greatest enemy easy access to our ports and airports when he failed to shut them down until it was far too late.

May 22, 2020

Trump threatens to "override" governors if they don't open houses of worship such as churches, synagogues and mosques, even though he lacks legal standing and like an American Pilate has repeatedly washed his hands of any responsibility for coronavirus deaths.

May 23, 2020

As the American death toll inexorably approaches 100,000 with no end in sight, Trump plays golf.

China reports no new coronavirus cases for an entire day, thanks to its government's swift, decisive actions early in the year when Trump was insisting there was "no risk" or "minimal risk" to Americans. Meanwhile British researchers identify 24 states, nearly half the nation, where the coronavirus threatens to rage out of control, according to their model, which takes cell phone data into account. “There’s evidence that the U.S. is not under control, as an entire country,” said Samir Bhatt, a senior lecturer in geostatistics at Imperial College. The model shows potentially ominous scenarios if people move around as they did previously and do so without taking precautions. In California and Florida, the death rate could spike to roughly 1,000 a day by July without efforts to mitigate the spread, according to the report.

May 24, 2020

Trump brag-tweets: "Cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the Country!"

Once again, Trump is lying. While the coronavirus curve has flattened in some parts of the country, things are getting worse in a number of rural areas. As reported in the previous day's article, British researchers have identified 24 states where the coronavirus remains out of control. And this is before the country reopens for normal business. Once again, Trump is a false "profit" putting money and his reelection above the truth and American lives.

May 25, 2020

On Memorial Day, with the US about to eclipse 100,000 coronavirus deaths according to Worldometer, Trump plays golf and insults other Americans right and left, including calling former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions "mentally unqualified" and Hillary Clinton a "skank." Trump doesn't bother to mention the victims of the coronavirus or their suffering families and friends. As always, his focus in on himself, his golf game and his petty grievances. Trump has spent 358 days playing golf, or nearly a full year, in less than a single term as president. This, after he said Barack Obama should only play golf with other heads of state. What a hypocrite!

In a series of tweets ultra-conservative Ann Coulter calls Trump a "disloyal actual retard" a "shallow and broken man" a "complete moron" an "idiotic meddler" and a "lout" who is incapable of even "pretending to be" a "decent, compassionate human being." Coulter tweets: "COVID gave Trump a chance to be a decent, compassionate human being (or pretending to be). But he couldn't even do that." She also calls Trump "the most disloyal human God ever created" and a "complete blithering idiot."

May 26, 2020

By the end of the Memorial Day weekend, as Trump played golf and engaged in his usual petty tweet-vendettas, the US coronavirus death toll had eclipsed 100,000 and continued to climb rapidly higher. Trump didn't mention the 100,000 victims but tweeted about his "great reviews."

May 27, 2020

More than 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the last 10 weeks. More than 100,000 lie dead in their graves. What does Trump do? He retweets a user who says the image of Joe Biden wearing a black mask "endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death."

May 29, 2020

A headline in The New Yorker calls Trump "THE MOST MENDACIOUS PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY." According to CNN's fact-checkers, Trump has told 654 lies over the last 14 weeks, during the greatest threat to the United States since World War II.

May 31, 2020

Polls taken in late May, as the virus spread like wildfire across the Sun Belt, indicated that Trump’s scorn for masks was suppressing mask use. A Morning Consult survey found that the top predictor of non-use of masks, among dozens of factors tested, was support for Trump. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that people who seldom or never wore masks were 12 times more likely to support Trump than his opponent, Joe Biden, who does wear a mask in public. Some scientific models imply that Trump’s suppression of mask use may have contributed to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.

June 1, 2020

Trump clears peaceful protesters from his path with tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets so that he can pose with a Bible outside a nearby church. The church's bishop accuses Trump of using it as a "prop."

Anthony Scaramucci tweets: "Trump fired tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters so he could get a photo op in front a church that didn't want him there, holding a Bible from which he cannot name a single verse, all to prove he's not a coward hiding in his bunker again. A perfect encapsulation [of Trump being Trump]."

The following day Admiral Michael Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would call Trump out in public for using the US military to stage a photo-op and deny Americans their constitutional right to assemble and protest peacefully. Mullen said: "It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church." Mullen also said that Trump "laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces." American cities, Mullen observed, "are not ‘battle spaces’ to be dominated, and must never become so."

Other major American military voices would also criticize Trump's actions, including former Secretary of Defense James Mathis, former JCS chairman General Martin Dempsey, and former head of the Joint Special Operations Command General Tony Thomas.

Former director of the CIA and NSA General Michael Hayden said that he was "appalled" to see General Mark Milley, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wearing full battle gear for the photo-op attack on peaceful protesters.

Current Secretary of Defense Mark Esper would later say that he also opposes using active-duty troops to put down the protests in American cities.

James N. Miller, a former undersecretary of defense, would resign in protest as a leader of the Defense Science Board. In his resignation letter, which Miller sent to the Washington Post for publication, he wrote that, by accompanying Trump to St. John’s Church after peaceful protesters were dispersed by tear gas, Esper had violated his oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution.” Miller continued, “Anyone who takes the oath of office must decide where he or she will draw the line. I must now ask: If last night’s blatant violations do not cross the line for you, what will? … I hope this letter of resignation will encourage you to again contemplate the obligations you understood … as well as your obligations to the men and women in our military and other Americans whose lives may be at stake.”

We are reminded that in February 2017, retired Admiral William McRaven, former head of the Joint Special Operations Command and the officer who planned the raid on Osama bin Laden, denounced Trump as the “greatest threat to democracy” he’d ever seen.

June 3, 2020

In a scathing broadside, General James Mathis accuses Trump of a lack maturity and of dividing the nation by ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens to assemble and protest peacefully. Mattis, an esteemed Marine general who resigned as Secretary of Defense to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, had been mostly silent on the subject of Trump since his resignation. But he broke silence, writing: “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

June 4, 2020

Americans mobilize in peaceful marches across the nation to protest Tiny Man Trump's creation of a Tiny Man Square in the heart of the American capitol.

June 5, 2020

Trump claims there are two million coronavirus vaccinations "ready to go" but Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is involved in efforts to produce such vaccines, declines to comment. The White House also declines to confirm or explain Trump's latest bizarre claim. It makes no sense to mass produce millions of vaccinations before they have been tested for safety and effectiveness, so Trump's claim seems like more of his magical thinking, in which wishes ride horses.

With more than 100,000 Americans dead and in their graves, the coronavirus continuing to increase in a number of states, and sky-high unemployment numbers, Trump claims: "the trajectory is great!" and "We made every decision correctly!"

June 8, 2020

A Fox headline announces that Trump is down 14 points to Joe Biden in the latest national poll. Trump immediately says he will begin having large-scale political rallies again. In Phase One of reopening, per the White House's own guidelines, gatherings of more than 10 people should be avoided. In Phase Two, congregations should be kept to no more than 50 people. It seems Trump will ignore his own recommendations and endanger thousands of his followers in a desperate gamble to retain the presidency. What are the lives of thousands of Americans, compared to his titanic ego?

June 10, 2020

According to a new Gallup poll, Trump's approval rating has dropped to 39% and he remains the most unpopular president of modern times.

Trump announces plans to resume holding political rallies, targeting four states: Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma. One point of the rallies, he explained, was to signal that it was time to “open up our country” and “get back to business.” When reporters raised the possibility that he might spread the virus by drawing crowds indoors, he accused them of “trying to Covid Shame us on our big Rallies.”

June 11, 2020

Trump says the coronavirus has been reduced to just the "embers" and "ashes" of a spent pandemic.

The coronavirus itself does not agree and cases are rising in more than half the states. The worst days lie ahead and are rapidly approaching (see June 25).

June 13, 2020

“COVID is here in Tulsa, it is transmitting very efficiently,” warned Dr. Bruce Dart, director of Tulsa’s City-County Health Department, in the Tulsa World. “I wish we could postpone this to a time when the virus isn’t as large a concern as it is today.” On Saturday, Oklahoma reported 225 new infections, a new daily high. Dr. Dart blames the spike in infections on several factors, including quarantine fatigue, and warned that a large outbreak had the possibility of overwhelming the county’s health system. “A large indoor rally with 19-20,000 people is a huge risk factor today in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” he said before suggesting Trump could fall ill as a result of his own event. “I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”

June 15, 2020

Trump and Pence continue to speak as if the coronavirus has been defeated; according to them increases in cases are due to more testing. But an official familiar with the coronavirus task force told CNN that the surge in cases is also due to more infections. "They just don't want to deal with the reality of it," the official said of Trump, Pence and other top officials. "They're in denial."

June 16, 2020

Trump: "I always say, even without it [a vaccine], it just goes away."

Yes, you always say it. You've been saying it for half a year. That doesn't make it true. The common cold has never "just gone away." The flu has never "just gone away." This disease is related to those diseases, so there is absolutely no reason to think it "just goes away" and it is far, far more deadly.

Is Trump a criminal? "What he's doing in Tulsa is criminal endangerment," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN's Erin Burnett. "He's intentionally exposing people to the risk of acquiring a deadly virus just for a photo op," Reiner said.

Mike Pence says: "We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy."

The invisible enemy does not agree.

June 17, 2020

Trump: "It's dying out ... uh, it's fading away."

No, it's getting worse in the United States.

Jacqueline Policastro asks Trump: "Coronavirus cases are rising in 22 states, including Oklahoma, where you plan to hold a big rally this week. Aren't you worried about people getting sick?" Trump replies: "No, because if you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It's dying out."

Once again, Trump is either blatantly lying or displaying profound ignorance.

June 18, 2020

According to John Bolton, Trump's foreign policy consists primarily of flattering and sucking up to our enemies, giving them cheap gifts, begging for their election interference, and cheering the construction of concentration camps.

June 19, 2020

"For reasons that hardly need to be stated, the Court will not order a nationwide seizure and destruction of a political memoir," Jude Royce Lamberth wrote while declining to suppress John Bolton's forthcoming book.

Six of Trump's campaign staffers tested positive for the coronavirus, highlighting the dangers of packing 20,000 people into an indoor arena for the upcoming Tulsa political rally. Since Trump refuses to wear a mask, many of his supporters will follow suit, exacerbating the danger.

Facebook has removed Trump and Pence campaign ads that featured upside-down red triangles, which were once used in Nazi concentration camps to identify political prisoners, just as yellow stars were used to identify Jews. Facebook called the upside-down red triangles symbols of "organized hate." And Trump does seem to love organizing hatred.

June 20, 2020

Trump has a paltry 6,200 attendees at his Tulsa rally, less than a third of the arena's capacity.

"The best revenge is massive success." — Frank Sinatra
"See, I can sip a small glass of water one-handed, after all! I am the GREATEST!" — Donald Trump

Before leaving for Tulsa, Trump had bragged, “We’re going to be in Oklahoma. And it’s a crowd like, I guess, nobody’s seen before!”
Well, yes, it was hard to see the crowd. Apparently most of them were disguised as empty blue seats.

Despite being warned that infections in Oklahoma were surging, Trump proceeded with the Tulsa rally. To encourage social distancing, the arena’s managers put “Do Not Sit Here” stickers on alternate seats. The Trump campaign removed the stickers. Trump also refused to wear a mask at the rally and most of the audience emulated him. In his speech Trump bragged about continuing to shake children’s hands. Two weeks later, Tulsa broke its record for daily infections and the city’s health director said the rally was partly to blame. Former presidential candidate Herman Cain attended the rally, tested positive for the virus days afterward, and died shortly thereafter. The governor of Oklahoma attended the rally and became the first American governor to become infected with the virus.

June 22, 2020

Trump confirms that he was not joking when he said that he instructed his aides to slow down coronavirus testing. “I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear,” Trump told reporters. Once again Trump has made it clear that he doesn't like the sky-high coronavirus numbers and that he sees less testing as a way to get the real numbers to look smaller. But how is that not premeditated murder of every American citizen who might have been saved by testing? What Trump keeps telling us is that he will gladly let Americans die in droves if it helps him get reelected. Weeks later, officials involved in negotiations on Capitol Hill would disclose that the Trump administration, against the wishes of Senate Republicans, was actually trying to block funding for virus tests!

Eight of Trump's campaign staff and two of his Secret Service detail tested positive in a single week. Apparently Trump only wants to slow down testing of people who don't come close to him.

June 23, 2020

Half the states have rising cases of the coronavirus, with the situation especially acute in Texas, Florida and Arizona. Unsurprisingly, the more aggressive the reopening program, the more people get infected and die.

The EU may ban travelers from the US due to its abysmal coronavirus record under Trump. Why are so many other nations doing better than the US in their coronavirus responses? They don't have leaders who live in denial, worrying only about their hair, their polls and their reelection chances. They have leaders who actually lead. The US has a "president" who denies any responsibility for anything that goes wrong on his watch. As a result, we are watching Americans die in staggering numbers.

Trump's "solution" to the coronavirus is to reduce testing, let even more people die, and underreport the actual numbers. Is that "leadership" or insanity?

June 25, 2020

More than 37,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported on Thursday, June 25, 2020 according to Johns Hopkins. These alarming numbers eclipsed the darkest day of the pandemic set two months earlier, on April 24. The new data suggests that aggressive state re-openings championed by Trump have poured gasoline on a fire now raging across a swathe of southern states (where millions of people believe Trump and doubt the media). Trump has apparently thrown two months of sacrifices out the window and now things are worse than before the shutdown.

Trump insists that he has "prevailed" over the coronavirus, that it is "dying out" and that the numbers are "miniscule[sic]." However, Republican governors of the red states know better and will have to slow down the reopenings if they want to save as many lives as possible. So expect to see the red states exercising more caution as they prove Trump the liar that he so obviously is.

In the middle of a global pandemic, the Trump administration files a brief asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

June 26, 2020

More than half the states are now reporting increases in the number of new COVID cases. Florida reports its highest-ever single day of cases. In Texas, officials fear "apocalyptic" surges if current trends continue and some bars are being forced to reclose.

The New York Times breaks a story about bounties being paid by Russia to Taliban militants to kill American and coalition forces currently stationed in Afghanistan. Trump, as usual, is clueless.

June 27, 2020

The US reports more than 40,000 new Covid-19 cases, its biggest daily jump ever. In Texas, where there has been an aggressive reopening, coronavirus-related hospitalizations reached a record high for the 16th day in a row. Meanwhile, Trump had another golf vacation weekend at his private club in Sterling, Virginia.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar disputed Trump's outlandish claim that the coronavirus is "fading" and "dying out" when he tells CNN’s State of the Union that “the window is closing for us to take action and get this under control.”

So why does Trump continue to lie, lie, lie?

June 28, 2020

The US reports more than 42,000 new Covid-19 cases, its second consecutive new high and a tremendously disturbing trend in the wrong direction. Meanwhile Trump and Pence continue to sound as if things are improving and the reopenings are going well.

The Washington Post publishes evidence in the form of videotaped quotes that Trump has claimed 18 times that the coronavirus will just "go away" on its own. This is a claim Trump has been making for half a year, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Trump's barrage of lies coupled with wishful thinking is killing Americans ...

Trump lied and lied and lied.
Americans died and died and died.
―Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Even Mr. Pseudo Machismo Mike Pence is now wearing a mask in public. So much for Boss Hogg Trump's claim that the coronavirus is "dying out" and "fading away." Trump is the Fount of Unfathomable Ignorance and Pence is his Masked Mouthpiece.

June 29, 2020

CNN cites White House and intelligence officials "intimately familiar" with Trump's telephone conversations with world leaders, and reports former top Trump officials "including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly" concluded the President was often "delusional" in his conversations with foreign leaders.

June 30, 2020

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci issued a dire prediction, warning that as many as 100,000 Americans could become infected each day if the nation doesn't make urgently-needed behavioral changes.

So much for Trump's claims that the coronavirus is a hoax, overrated, overstated, the same as the flu, less dangerous than the flu, under control, fading away, dying out, evaporating with the heat, etc.

Even as hard-hit blue states like New York and Massachusetts have flattened their coronavirus curves, the virus is exploding in red states like Florida, Texas and Arizona, where more people listen to and trust Trump ― a very dangerous thing to do in these troubled times. Trump doesn't wear a mask, so many of his supporters don't. Trump says the coronavirus is "fading away" and "dying out," so they believe the worst is over when it's not. Trump is holding rallies in indoor arenas, so why not go to concerts and sit shoulder to shoulder? Trump is flying around the country to play golf, so why not travel, have some fun? It's no mystery why the blue states are doing better than the red states. The blue states don't believe Trump's lies and don't follow his abysmal example. The red states do and they are now paying the price.

July 1, 2020

Donald Trump has “essentially gone AWOL from the job of leadership that he should be providing a country in trouble” according to Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary and CIA director who served in various capacities under nine US presidents.

July 2, 2020

The US sets a new daily record with 55,000 new coronavirus cases.

July 3, 2020

2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who as co-chair of Black Voices for Trump was one of the surrogates at Trump's recent rally in Tulsa, has been hospitalized with the coronavirus. Cain, who refused to wear a mask, was reportedly on a ventilator and would die on July 30.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. and a top fund-raising official for the Trump re-election campaign, tested positive for the coronavirus.

Donald Trump Jr. is self isolating and canceling all public events.

At least six states set single-day new case records: Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. New cases are now rising in around 40 states, according to reports. In Arizona, 90% of all adult intensive care beds are in use.

None of this prevents Trump from going to a Mount Rushmore event with an estimated 7,500 attendees. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a Republican, says there are no plans to enforce social distancing during Trump’s address.

Trump continues to lie, lie, lie: "The crisis is being handled. ... we're putting out the fires." He claims the US is on its way to a "tremendous victory" over the microbe as new cases increase and the death toll incessantly mounts.

No, the fires are raging out of control, especially in red states where more people believe Trump's lies and take fewer precautions. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, showed Texans graphs with rocketing infection rates, positivity rates for tests and hospitalizations. "These numbers reveal a very stark reality. Covid-19 is not going away. In fact, it is getting worse," Abbott said. Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases specialist at Baylor, warned that Texas, Arizona and Florida are close to entering "apocalyptic" territory in terms of new infections.

July 4, 2020

During his Independence Day address, Trump says that 99% of U.S. COVID-19 cases were "totally harmless."

Another lie.

Trump is being called a "super-spreader" for jetting around the country for large-scale public events sans social distancing, in the middle of a pandemic. Today what Trump will really be celebrating is his personal independence to sate his gargantuan ego at the expense of other people's lives. Trump always and only celebrates himself. His hair and its perception are vastly more important to Trump than people lying in ventilators, struggling to breathe. Such people have always been "losers" to Trump, along with POWs, the handicapped, darker-skinned children in cages, menstruating women and those he groped without asking their permission first. In retrospect, none of the latter were worthy of the attention of a "winner" like Trump.

Trump once tweeted: "If you put the wrong person in office, you'll see things that you would not have believed are possible." For once he spoke the truth. We never thought we would see an American president ripping toddlers from their mothers' breasts and tossing them into icy cells, never to be reunited. We never thought we would see an American president pandering to and inflaming the passions of fascists and white supremacists. We never thought we would see an American president expressing love for brutes like Putin and Jong-un while alienating our allies. We never thought we would see an American president believe Putin over our generals and intelligence officers. We never thought we would see an American president making his hair and his polls seem vastly more important than more than 100,000 Americans lying dead in their graves, with many others on their way. The independence we need today is independence from Trump and his hateful, egotistical lunacy.

July 5, 2020

Trump tweets in all-caps that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”

How many children will die as a result? How many will survive but infect their elderly grandparents, who are more vulnerable? If adults can't safely practice social distancing, how can we possibly expect children to stay safe?

Trump lies again, saying 99% of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." But none of the real experts are saying that. The WHO says that worldwide up to 20% of infected people require hospitalization and we know that substantial numbers of them have to go on respirators in order to breathe. Many other people experience more than just the "sniffles" but don't require hospitalization. No one knows the long-term effects of the disease, but it is far from "totally harmless." Trump continues to play a dangerous game of lulling Americans into thinking the coronavirus is less dangerous than it really is.

July 6, 2020

Trump falsely claims in a tweet: “We now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World.” According to Johns Hopkins, the US has the world’s ninth-worst mortality rate, with 41.33 deaths per 100,000 people.

Trump brags that he will be “putting a lot of pressure” on governors to open schools, applauding Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for saying his state would do so.

Florida has a horrific record with adults failing to practice social distancing under its Trumpian governor. Does anyone really think Florida's children will be safe, with Trump and DeSantis ignoring the danger? And yet Florida’s education commissioner signed an emergency order that “all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students,” subject to change based on future executive orders and advice of local health departments.

Will this be a death sentence for students and/or their families?

Trump makes school reopenings all about himself and his reelection campaign, not children's lives and health: "And we don't want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons. They think it's going to be good for them politically so they keep the schools closed. No way! So, we’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools to get them open and it's very important. It's very important for our country. It’s very important for the well-being of the student and parents. So, we’re going to be putting a lot of pressure on opening your schools in the fall."

Trump sharply criticized Harvard for announcing plans to only partially reopen in the fall, by conducting many classes online, calling that “an easy way out.”

Saving the lives of students is "the easy way out?"

This was said by a rich man who is surrounded by large numbers of people working to keep him safe and healthy. Why doesn't Trump take the hard and dangerous route himself?

Trump is down 11 points to Joe Biden in Michigan, where 59% of the people polled disapprove of him. The surprising thing is that 31% don't.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blasted Trump for his ludicrous claim that 99% of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." Cuomo accused Trump of "enabling the virus" when he "makes up facts" in deceitful attempts to deny the current crisis exists. "He is facilitating the virus," Cuomo said. "He is enabling the virus by statements like that. And you're seeing the infection rate go up, and you're seeing the economy suffer, and he is part of that current debacle that we are in."

July 7, 2020

Like a cold-blooded Mafia don demanding his vig, Trump "leans" on American school systems to reopen aggressively in the middle of a pandemic. Why? Because what matters to Trump, a narcissistic sociopath, are decidedly NOT the lives and health of children, but his hair and how it is perceived, his polls and how he is perceived, and his reelection chances. In red states that reopened aggressively, adults have been unable to practice social distancing sufficiently to prevent the coronavirus from spreading like wildfire. So how can anyone expect high schoolers, much less grade schoolers and kindergartners, to stay safe?

Trump has no business deciding or influencing what happens to millions of innocent children who trust adults to protect them and act in their best interests. Is that not our most sacred duty as parents, when we have children? We need to protect our children from the coronavirus at all costs, and that means we need to protect them from Trump.

July 8, 2020

Trump threatens to "cut off funding" to schools that do not reopen to his satisfaction.

Trump complains that the CDC guidelines for safely reopening schools are "very tough" and "expensive," apparently wanting something weaker and cheaper.

Trump seems to be clueless about how close the school reopenings are: "Well, we have a long time to think about the school stuff. Because, you know. But we want to have the schools open," Trump said. "I would say that when we talk about the fall, that seems like a long time. It's a long time." But many school districts will begin the new school year in just a few short weeks, and they need time to plan ahead.

Time is of the essence and children's lives and health are at risk. But once again Trump seems lost — not only without a plan but without a clue.

July 9, 2020

As the US passes 3.2 million coronavirus cases and sets another daily record with more than 60,000 new cases, Trump insists the US is “in a good place” and admits he “didn’t listen to my experts.”

Now Trump is not listening to his experts about the incredible risk of reopening schools when adults can't successfully practice social distancing.

July 10, 2020

According to White House insiders, Trump sees himself as the victim of the coronavirus, of the faltering economy, of the nation's racial unrest, of Supreme Court rulings that don't go his way, etc. Never mind that people are dying, that lives are being shattered and destroyed. What really matters is The Donald and how he is perceived. And this is why he is willing to force kindergartners and grade schoolers to enter unsafe schools. This is all about The Donald and his needs and wants.

July 11, 2020

Trump wears a mask publicly for the first time, after 135,000 American coronavirus deaths, and after having mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask. So call Trump the Lone Deranger.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pushes for U.S. schools to reopen even though adults have been unable to practice social distancing effectively. Apparently, she is not smarter than a fifth-grader.

Florida, under the guidance of its mini-Trump-me governor, sets a record for new coronavirus cases in a single day, with 15,000. That is more than the state of New York at the height of its crisis. The U.S. outbreak is now growing across 37 states. Eight states just set new records for single-day coronavirus deaths: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Tennessee.

The LSU and Clemson national football championship squads can't field teams, with 30+ players each testing positive for COVID-19.
The super-conditioned athletes of the Nashville SC can't take the soccer field.
Mike Trout, the greatest baseball player of his generation, may skip an abbreviated 2020 season.

Since adults can't reopen safely, how can we expect children to go back to school safely?

Trump and DeVos are a danger to American children. If the children live in red states where governors follow Trump's ignorant lead — Florida, for example — they are even more at risk.

The Peach with the Bleach and a Brain out of Reach and his cohort Betsy DeVil DeVos are trying to make kindergartners and grade-schoolers do what adults can't, by forcing them to enter unsafe schools.

How is that not premeditated murder?

July 13, 2020

Trump retweets the claim that "Everyone is lying" about the pandemic: namely "The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors."

Trump and his administration continue to lie, lie, lie. Peter Navarro told Fox News: "We were cruising along, until the Chinese Communist Party basically hit us with that deadly virus, that weaponized virus. And I don't think it's any coincidence that the first year that China had a down economy was the same year now that they're coming after us in all sorts of ways. And Joe Biden is the candidate of the Chinese Communist Party."

The New York Times reports that 5.4 million Americans have lost their health insurance in the pandemic. The uninsured rate is twice as bad in Republican-run red states that refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida and Texas. Three out of ten Texans are now uninsured.

Trump is trying to force kindergartners and grade schoolers to attend unsafe schools on a daily basis. But some high-ranking Florida Republicans have not committed to attending a Republican National Convention in their home state, for a much shorter period of time, including Marco Rubio. Should young children be forced to take chances that adult lawmakers won't?

July 14, 2020

Some Arizona and Texas counties are running out of space in their morgues and have requested refrigerated trucks as gruesome backups. Arizona hospital ICUs are at about 90% of capacity. Tucson funeral homes are running out of room for bodies. And still Trump and DeVos insist on forcing children to enter unsafe schools?

"Rarely has a president shown himself to be so unequal to a tragic national emergency." — Stephen Collinson

The US just set yet another single-day record for new coronavirus infections with 67,417. What is Trump's plan of action? Trump's latest brainstorm is to take coronavirus data away from the CDC and give it directly to the Trump administration. But Trump and his cronies have proven repeatedly to be far more interested in perceptions than facts, science and truth. They lie while people die. Thus they cannot be trusted with the data. But because the CDC numbers look bad for Trump, he will take control of the numbers. Will Trump manipulate the numbers to make himself look less incompetent than he actually is? Trump, as always, seems only interested in how he is perceived. For instance, he concluded his latest aimlessly meandering monologue by saying wistfully: "So hopefully I'll be able to be the President where we say, 'Look at the great job I did.'"

No one with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a functional brain capable of separating fact from fiction is going to say that. What Trump should hear in November is a resounding, thundering: "You're fired!" Or will Trump try to manipulate those numbers too, like his hero Putin?

Is it possible that Trump knows how many American children will be hospitalized under his aggressive school reopening plan, and how many will die? Has he been told that he can't win reelection if the real numbers are know, so his only path to reelection is to lie? Will the American public be fed doctored numbers that paint a rosy picture, while in reality more and more American children end up in hospitals, on ventilators, in graves?

If it sounds like a ghoulish plan, well, Trump is a ghoul.

If the ghoulish plan doesn't work and Trump's polls remain in the pits where they belong, is plan B to take control of the votes?

Americans, welcome to Trumplandia, where Trump controls the facts, the figures and their dissemination, like his hero Putin.

July 15, 2020

According to a CNBC report, the CDC will no longer update its publicly available coronavirus data after July 14. Trump is apparently now in control of the numbers. Will we no longer hear the truth, but only numbers that are more pleasing to Trump?

Trump demotes his campaign manager Brad Parscale and promotes Bill Stepien. But as Andrew Bates points out in a statement to Fox News: "The Trump campaign's game of musical chairs won't fix this. We need a new president for that."

July 17, 2020

NBC News reports CDC head Robert Redfield saying that if everyone were wearing masks, the virus could be under control within weeks.

Trump once again ignores the real experts and their life-saving advice: "No. I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don't believe in that, no."

July 19, 2020

Don the Con is threatening the lives and health of millions of American children with his lies. Trump tells Fox News that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases.” Why? “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day,” Trump told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test.”

During his interview with Wallace, Trump called Dr. Fauci an alarmist and repeated his mantra that the virus would “disappear.” He excoriated governors for “not allowing me to have rallies” and accused them of keeping businesses closed to hurt his reelection chances. He claimed that “masks cause problems” and said Americans should feel free not to wear them. He threatened to defund schools unless they resumed in-class teaching. Trump scoffed that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases,” since they would “heal automatically.” By testing so many people, he groused, health care workers were “creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, ‘Oh, we have more cases.’”

Since the Wallace interview, Trump has attacked and mocked his medical advisers. He lashed out at Dr. Birx for discussing the virus's increasing spread. He retweeted a false claim that Dr. Fauci was criticizing hydroxychloroquine “to perpetuate Covid deaths to hurt Trump.” When Fauci told Congress that infections had increased due to insufficient mitigation, Trump rebuked him and blamed the surge on increased testing.

Millions of Americans believe Don the Con and now even kindergartners and grade schoolers are at risk. How can we expect them to do what adults have been unable to do: stay safe in a global pandemic?

In January, the GOP had a two-point edge on Democrats in terms of voters who either identified as Republicans or leaned Republican: 47% to 45%. Now Democrats and Democratic leaners enjoy an 11-point edge: 50% to 39%. That's a 13-point swing and what the GOP gets for bowing down to Don the Con while Americans die in staggering numbers.

July 20, 2020

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican who seldom wears a mask and who attended President Trump's rally in Tulsa, announced that he is the first governor to test positive for coronavirus. Stitt is at least the tenth person associated with Trump's rallies in Tulsa and at Mount Rushmore to test positive. The others include eight Trump campaign workers, two Secret Service agents, Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle (a Trump fundraiser), and Stitt.

Two recent polls have Joe Biden leading Trump by fifteen points.

July 21, 2020

The CDC estimates actual coronavirus infections to be double to thirteen times higher than the reported numbers.

July 22, 2020

Adult Republicans cannot meet safely and have scrapped their Florida convention, but Trump wants to force kindergartners and grade schoolers to do what the adults cannot do themselves: stay safe in the middle of a pandemic. Trump and the GOP are like the captain of the Titanic and his crew throwing children overboard to save themselves. Trump makes it sound as if children never get infected by the coronavirus, or if they do, they sniffle once or twice and it's magically gone the next day. That is far from the truth. The real medical experts are not spouting such nonsense. And while it's thankfully true that the mortality rate for children is lower than for adults, The WHO has reported that as children get older their infection rates become similar to those of adults. And they can end up being hospitalized with breathing problems so severe they need respiratory assistance. We are not hearing that from Trump, DeVos and Co. Is Trump putting millions of American children at risk in order to save his sagging reelection hopes? Are we going to allow him to force children to do what adults have been unable to do, and which Trump and his cronies have admitted even they can't do safely for a few days?

July 26, 2020

Support for Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic reached a new low at 32% according to a new Associated Press poll. 

July 27, 2020

Trump's national security adviser, Robert C. O'Brien, became the highest-ranking member of his administration to test positive for the coronavirus.

Oklahoma, where Trump staged his unsafe Tulsa rally, with people sitting side-by-side and most not wearing masks, had an average of 1,036 new cases, a 20 percent increase from its previous high.

"We need all Americans to be conscious about their actions and to exercise extreme vigilance," Trump said. But of course Trump himself refuses to exercise extreme vigilance. He now says wearing a mask is patriotic, but that makes him our first unpatriotic president. His Tulsa rally was far from "extreme vigilance."

July 28, 2020

Trump falsely claims that “large portions” of the country are “corona-free.” Only 35 sparsely-populated counties accounting for less than 0.02% of the population, have not reported a coronavirus case in the past week.

Trump said he didn’t know Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position on hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug Trump has repeatedly claimed, contrary to scientific research, to be effective against COVID-19. In fact, Fauci has said — at briefings attended by Trump — that there is no evidence that hydroxychloroquine works for COVID-19. And at a briefing on April 6, Trump cut off Fauci when he was asked about the drug, saying Fauci had answered the question “15 times.”

Trump continues to tout hydroxychloroquine, saying: “I happen to believe in it.” His latest medical adviser is Dr. Stella Immanuel, who has said that demon semen (i.e., demons having sex with sleeping women) causes cysts and endometriosis, that alien DNA has been used in medical treatments, and that scientists are plotting to develop a "vaccine" to make it impossible to become religious. Trump said the deranged doctor was "spectacular in her statements."

July 30, 2020

2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who as co-chair of Black Voices for Trump was one of the surrogates at Trump's rally in Tulsa, has died with COVID-19. Cain, who refused to wear a mask, was reportedly on a ventilator at the time of his death.

Trump tweets that Fox News is "unwatchable," presumably for disclosing that the polls show him trailing Joe Biden by large margins. Is the marriage made in hell finally over, or is Trump just having one of his temper tantrums?

August 2, 2020

Trump claims the coronavirus is "receding" in the United States.

Another lie.

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, says of the epidemic: "What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It's into the rural as equal urban areas."

Trump calls Dr. Birx "pathetic."

But anyone who disagrees with Trump by telling the truth is "pathetic" to Trump.

August 3, 2020

Trump was among social media users who tweeted a video advocating hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment and saying that masks and shutdowns are not effective in combating coronavirus. Facebook and Twitter removed the video, flagging it as misinformation, but not before more than 17 million people had viewed it.

August 4, 2020

"It is what it is," Trump tells Jonathan Swan of Axios in an interview. Swan had just rebutted Trump's claim that the coronavirus is "under control" by pointing out that more than a thousand Americans have been dying every day. "It is what it is," Trump said coldly, sounding callous and disconnected, before going on to claim yet again that he has been doing a great job. Swan repeatedly fact-checked Trump during the interview, and Trump repeatedly came across as needy (begging for praise), narcissistic (everything is always about him) and dishonest (his "facts" are mostly falsehoods mixed in with a few wild exaggerations).

After Swan quoted opinions that his "wishful thinking and salesmanship" were "just not suitable" when "a pandemic has killed 145,000 people," Trump became defensive and claimed other countries are doing worse than the US, as if that somehow makes preventable American deaths less tragic. Trump went on to loonily blame China for creating COVID-19 on purpose. Why? To get back at Trump for making the U.S. economy too awesomely powerful!

While Trump tried to dominate the interview by talking over Swan, Swan did get in some quick sharp points, leaving stiletto-like punctures in Trump's ego, no doubt.

For instance, Trump said: "Those people who really understand it say it’s incredible, the job we’ve done."

"Who says that?" Swan asked.

Trump: "Read the manuals. Read the books."

Swan: "Manuals? What manuals?"

August 5, 2020

Even though the CDC has reported over 240,000 documented COVID-19 cases in children, Trump says during an interview, "If you look at children, children are almost — and I would almost say definitely — but almost immune from this disease." He added, "They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem." Trump tells this abominable and potentially very deadly lie even though he has known at least since March 19 that "plenty" of young people get infected, as he explained to Bob Woodward in a taped telephone call.

Trump says, "My view is the schools should open, this thing is going away. It will go away like things go away. No question in my mind, it will go away."

But the coronavirus is related to the common cold and flu, which have never "gone away." So this may be lethal advice for 76 million American school teachers and their families, friends, teachers and other school workers.

August 6, 2020

Trump claims a vaccine may be available by election day. Medical experts have consistently said that it will take longer than that, due to a lengthy testing process to make sure the vaccine is safe and effective.

August 7, 2020

Trump falsely says the coronavirus is "disappearing" and that "It's going to disappear."

August 17, 2020

Trump once again insists that "It's gonna be going away."

August 26, 2020

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton says the Trump administration's coronavirus response has been "one mistake after another." Bolton told CNN's Jake Tapper: "They've made a complete mess of it, and it's been a tragedy for Americans, those who have died and their families, the economic consequences."

Is this the biggest blunder so far? In a perplexing shift the CDC has changed its Covid-19 testing guidelines to say some people without symptoms may not need to be tested, even if they've been in close contact with someone known to have the virus. Previously, the CDC had said testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic. Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University who was previously Baltimore's health commissioner, said on CNN's New Day that the testing guideline changes make no sense. "These are exactly the people who should be tested," Wen said, giving the example of a person exposed at work who wants a test so they can protect their family at home. A senior federal health official close to the process told CNN that the sudden change in CDC testing guidance was due to pressure from the Trump White House: "It's coming from the top down." Everyone knows that Trump dislikes numbers that make him "look bad." Is he willing to risk killing large numbers of Americans in return for more attractive numbers? The consensus of the real medical experts is that we need to do more testing, not less. So if this perilous edict came from the top, it apparently came from the very top: from Trump himself. How many more Americans will he kill with his disdain for facts, logic and science?

August 27, 2020

Trump repeats his broken-record mantra for the 31st time that the pandemic "just goes away."

August 31, 2020

Trump compares Jacob Blake being shot in the back seven times to someone choking on a three-foot putt: "But they choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt."

Why does Trump prefer the advice of Dr. Scott W. Atlas, who is not an epidemiologist or expert on infectious diseases, to that of the real experts? “I think Trump clearly does not like the advice he was receiving from the people who are the experts — Fauci, Birx, etc. — so he has slowly shifted from their advice to somebody who tells him what he wants to hear,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University.

The Atlas approach sounds like the "herd immunity" theory and Trump verified this when he told Laura Ingraham: “Once you get to a certain number — we use the word 'herd' — once you get to a certain number, it’s going to go away.”

And Atlas said this himself in a Fox News radio interview in July: "When you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you're prolonging the problem because you're preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem. In fact, it's a positive."

So, according to Atlas, we want millions of Americans to get infected, in order to develop "herd immunity." But the real experts don't agree, and neither does the coronavirus. Everywhere Americans have been less guarded in their precautions, infections and deaths have soared. And it's not just "high risk" people who are dying. Sweden employed an Atlas-style "soft lockdown" with disastrous results. So Atlas doesn't make any sense. But he is saying what Trump wants to hear, and that's why he is currently in favor with Trump.

September 1, 2020

Trump wants to force 76 million American children to enter potentially unsafe schools, but apparently he can't be bothered to provide them with masks. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials announced the agency will end federal funding for cloth face masks in schools around the country. Joe Biden ripped Trump for this decision, saying the Trump White House was "starving schools of the needed funding, funding they need now." Biden continued, "If I were president of the day, I'd direct FEMA to make sure that our kids K-12 get full access to disaster relief and emergency assistance under the Stafford Act. I'd make sure that PPE [personal protective equipment] and sanitation supplies for schools qualify as emergency protective measures … to fully be eligible for federal assistance."

CNN reports that the Trump White House has all but given up hopes of stopping the pathogen and is now returning to a forceful state reopening strategy. And yet Trump puts pressure on the Big Ten to start playing football "immediately." Why the Big Ten, when other major college football conferences have also postponed their seasons? With Trump all that matters is Trump and his polls and reelection chances. He needs to win the critical swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Hence, his focus on the Big Ten. “On the one yard line!” Trump proclaimed in a tweet. But Trump didn't specify which side of the field and it quickly became clear that he was backed up in the shadow of his own end zone, in a losing game. Insiders scoffed at Trump's hope for a quick reversal; one called it "laughable."

"We risk a blow-back. We risk one step forward, three steps backwards," said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo. "That's what happened with this administration opening too soon in southern states. That's what's happening in schools opening where there's lots of COVID, and having to slam shut again."

September 5, 2020

Abdul El-Sayed, a physician, epidemiologist and former health director for the city of Detroit, accuses Trump of creating "white noise" to divert public attention from the pandemic at a time when new projections say the US coronavirus death toll could exceed 315,000 by December. Dr. El-Sayed also sternly criticized Trump's appointment of Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist, as a Covid-19 adviser, saying: "That's like appointing a plumber to build your roof because, well, plumbers and roofers both work on houses. Atlas is not an infectious disease expert and has little relevant experience in this space. His top qualification for the job in the Trump administration's eyes seems to be that he's appeared on conservative cable news shows in praise of the President's 'handling' of the pandemic."

September 9, 2020

Carl Bernstein, the journalist who broke the Watergate scandal with Bob Woodward, tells CNN that new on-the-record reporting that shows Trump saying that he knew the coronavirus was deadly and that he "always wanted to play it down" is "one of the great presidential felonies of all time."

"We listen to him cover up this grave national emergency. This is one of the great presidential felonies of all time – maybe the greatest presidential felony, and we have the smoking gun tape of the President committing the felony," Bernstein told CNN. Bernstein said through his handling of the pandemic, the President minimized the interest of the county, adding the President should have addressed the country with the information about the severity of the virus when he found out about it in February. "What you hear time and time again is the President forgetting about the national interest, selling out the national interest, minimizing the national interest, and putting in his own interest, that of his family, that of his own finances," he said. "That is the text of this book, not a subtext. It's the text of those tapes – undermining our well-being deliberately for his own ends. It is stunning and as I say, a presidential felony unlike any we've known of in our history," Bernstein added. Bernstein said that if Republican leaders try to contradict the tapes, "they too are responsible for what has happened here."

"This is a kind of homicidal negligence. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people have lost their lives because the President put his own re-election interest," he said.

September 10, 2020

Trump claims the US is “rounding the final turn” as the country’s coronavirus death toll nears 200,000. During a White House press conference Trump says, “We’re rounding the final turn, and a lot of good things are happening.” In reality, the US has a far higher death toll than any other nation.

“I'm sorry but I have to disagree with that,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, calling the US coronavirus levels seven months into the pandemic “disturbing.”

Speaking to reporters at the White House on the eve of 9-11, Trump sidesteps a question about why he told the public that the virus was "like a flu" when he knew it was much more deadly. "What I went out and said is very simple: I want to show a level of confidence, strength as a leader," Trump said. Apparently, Trump was more concerned about how he looked than being honest and saving innumerable American lives.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump’s efforts to downplay the pandemic “showed his contempt – contempt for the American people and their health, contempt for science, contempt for any real effort to crush the virus, contempt for his supporters, their children, their parents.”

September 11, 2020

Bob Woodward's revelations are shocking. For instance, on March 19 he was told by Trump that "plenty" of young people are susceptible to the coronavirus, and yet Trump had been trying to force schools to reopen aggressively on the premise that children are immune or "almost immune" to the coronavirus!

September 13, 2020

Trump holds an indoor rally near Las Vegas, ignoring a state order limiting gatherings to 50 people. Asked if he’s worried about exposure to the virus at an indoor rally, Trump says, “I’m on a stage and it’s very far away. And so I’m not at all concerned.”

September 14, 2020

Trump's approach to climate change is exactly the same as his approach to the coronavirus: both will magically vanish if we just close our eyes and wish hard enough. Here's Trump on our overheating planet: "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch ... I don't think science knows, actually." Well, no, actually it does.

Trump knows better than science, better than logic, better than common sense. How can we prevent forest fires? Rake forest "floors" and plant fewer explosive trees! Is Notre Dame cathedral on fire? Water-bomb it! What about those pesky hurricanes? Nuke 'em! Man-eating sharks? Deny them charity! Cancer-causing windmills? Tilt at 'em like Don Quixote on steroids! Problems with Puerto Rico? Swap it for Greenland! Too many dark-skinned immigrants? Import more Swedes and Norwegians! Is the coronavirus killing us? Inject lethal disinfectants and beat it to the punch!

As for the naked Trump troll-dolls and statutes, there are some things we don't want to see. Trump without clothes is at the top of my non-bucket list!

September 15, 2020

Trump says again that, even without a vaccine, the coronavirus will go away. “You’ll develop herd—like a herd mentality,” he says.

September 16, 2020

Attorney General William Barr says pandemic lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history” since slavery. 

September 17, 2020

Olivia Troye, a former top coronavirus aide and adviser to Mike Pence and an official on the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, has released a new video slamming Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Troye confirmed Bob Woodward's recent revelations by saying that Trump and his White House knew the coronavirus was in America and deadly serious in February. Troye also confirmed that Trump purposefully downplayed not only the messaging but also the need for serious government action, because it was an election year. Troye also related Trump finding a silver lining in the pandemic, telling the task force: “Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people." As Troye remarked, “Those disgusting people are the same people he claims to care about.”

September 21, 2020

How much does Trump care about 200,000 American lives lost to the coronavirus? Apparently not much, since Trump gives himself an A+ and says he's done a "phenomenal" job. That he could have saved 150,000 lives or more, according to epidemiologists, is "fake news."

"We're rounding the corner," Trump tells Fox & Friends. "With or without a vaccine. They hate when I say that but that's the way it is. ... We've done a phenomenal job. Not just a good job, a phenomenal job. Other than public relations, but that's because I have fake news. On public relations, I give myself a D. On the job itself, we take an A+. A phenomenal job!"

“It affects virtually nobody!” Trump says of the coronavirus at a rally in Swanton, Ohio. “It’s an amazing thing!”

Trump once again lies that the coronavirus does not affect younger people: “In some states, thousands of people — nobody young. Below the age of 18, like, nobody.” But in an recorded interview with Bob Woodward in March, Trump acknowledged that the virus affected “plenty of young people.” Trump told Woodward the chilling truth: “Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob. But just today, and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older.” The World Health Organization warned in August that young people are becoming primary spreaders of the virus in many countries. “We are seeing young people who are dying from this virus,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging disease and zoonosis unit.

Trump continues to act as if children are immune or virtually immune to the virus and once again calls for school to reopen. But the number of child Covid-19 cases doubled between July and August, rising to 406,109, and the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better as schools reopen. And what about the families, friends and teachers of children who get infected and spread the disease?

In reality the coronavirus has killed more Americans than the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War combined.

According to Vanity Fair, Jared Kushner said that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo "didn't pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state." Kushner also said, "His people are going to suffer and that's their problem."

September 25, 2020

Trump participates in a Latinos for Trump event at his golf club in Doral, Florida. Many people were not wearing masks. Trump flies to Atlanta, then Washington, then Newport News, then back to Washington. Hope Hicks is among his entourage.

September 26, 2020

Trump hosts a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden at which he announces his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. Few of the 150 attendees wear masks or maintain social distance. So far, people who attended and have since announced testing positive include Trump, his wife, Kellyanne Conway, Chris Christie, senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis, and University of Notre Dame president John Jenkins. Lee and Christie were seen hugging people at the event. Conway was seen standing close to other people during conversations.

“They were all mingling without masks and in close quarters,” one of the officials said. “No one was distanced.”

Trump departs the White House for a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, where many people in the crowd are not wearing masks.

September 27, 2020

Trump flies to Virginia to play golf, then returns to the White House for debate practice sessions. Chris Christie says no one wore masks during the sessions. Trump also holds a press conference and hosts Gold Star Families in the East Room.

Trump takes out time from golfing to tweet that the Supreme Court striking down the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic “Would be a big win for the USA!”  Joe Biden says that the effort to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the election “is designed to take away the ACA and your health care in midst of a pandemic.”

Redfield is reported criticizing Trump’s coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas, saying “Everything he says is false.”

September 28, 2020

Trump has more debate practice sessions at the White House. Chris Christie, Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway are present.

September 29, 2020

The common denominator in the White House coronavirus infections appears to be Trump himself. Is Trump the super-spreader? Did he know that he was infected before the debate and dodge the pre-debate test because he knew it would be positive? This would explain why the earliest Trump insiders to test positive — Hope Hicks and Melania — are two of the closest people to Trump, personally.

Trump travels to Cleveland for his first debate with Joe Biden. Melania Trump, Hope Hicks and Bill Stepien board Air Force One. Trump is not tested. Trump does a walkthrough of the debate stage without wearing a mask. The Trump family is photographed sitting close together and not wearing masks even though the debate rules required masks for everyone other than Trump, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace. Journalists report seeing officials from the Cleveland Clinic offering the Trump family masks, but none put them on. During the debate, Trump mocks Biden for frequently wearing a mask. On the way back from the debate, Jared Kushner is seen speaking animatedly to colleagues while not wearing a mask. After landing in the middle of a heavy rainstorm, other passengers departing Air Force One are seen huddling together to share an umbrella.

September 30, 2020

Trump and his campaign team travel to Minnesota for a rally. During the event, Hope Hicks, one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, begins to show common Covid-19 symptoms and later tests positive. On the return flight, Trump falls asleep on Air Force One, and will later be described by his physician as "fatigued" and by others as "lethargic." Hicks is isolated in a separate cabin in the back of the plane and deplanes using the rear steps.

Unfortunately and unfairly for Hope Hicks, she was one of the few Trump insiders who regularly wore a mask. How was that received in the Trumpian White House? “She was made fun of because she wore a mask,” a friend said.

October 1, 2020

Hope Hicks, who has traveled with Trump on Air Force One and Marine One during the week, tests positive for Covid-19. On a call with Iowa voters and in an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump sounds "raspy." White House staffers who have avoided masks are suddenly wearing them. And yet Trump leaves the White House by helicopter for a fund-raiser in New Jersey, where he appears before hundreds of supporters at his Bedminster golf club, both outside and indoors. Trump reportedly comes in contact with around 100 people and is described as "lethargic." And yet later in the day Trump once again insists that "the end of the pandemic is in sight."

“Trump thought he could go to the fundraiser and keep it secret that Hicks had it,” Republican donor Dan Eberhart said. According to the Washington Post, "Trump’s decision to proceed with the fundraiser after the known infection of Hicks, someone with whom he had extended recent close contact, went against the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities." In Bedminster, Trump held a roundtable fundraiser, sitting at a table with donors. Masks were not worn in the room. Many of the attendees were elderly. It sounds like a recipe for breeding the coronavirus.

Per the Post: "News of Hicks’s infection came late in the evening — not in a public release by the White House, but rather from a Bloomberg News report, which White House officials quickly confirmed."

October 2, 2020

Trump and his wife Melania test positive for the coronavirus and Trump announces by tweet that they will be in quarantine. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows announces that Trump is displaying symptoms of the disease. According to the Washington Post, those symptoms include a fever, cough and nasal congestion. It is later announced that Trump will be airlifted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“As of this afternoon the President remains fatigued but in good spirits,” White House physician Sean Conley wrote in a memo.

Sleepy Joe sends his condolences.

Karma can be an absolute bitch.

The news of Trump's infection came mere hours after he had insisted that "the end of the pandemic is in sight." According to the New York Times, Trump has "held multiple rallies around the country" since the Republican National Convention, "often with hundreds and even thousands of people jammed into tight spaces, many if not most without masks." In the 48 hours before Trump tested positive, he visited three states "all the while accompanied by his usual cadre of mostly mask-less staff and coming into contact with scores of supporters."

This also from the Times: "Increasingly, it looks as if a possible source of the spread may have been the ceremony in the White House Rose Garden last Saturday at which Mr. Trump announced his nomination of Judge [Amy Coney] Barrett, an event where few wore masks or maintained social distance. So far, several people who were there have said they have since tested positive, including Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, and the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame." And to that list we can add Trump and his wife, Kellyanne Conway and Senator Thom Tillis. Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who had recently spent time with Trump, including at an indoor fundraiser, also tested positive, as did three journalists who had covered recent White House events. Later, it was revealed that Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien has also tested positive for coronavirus.

According to the Washington Post: "Inside the West Wing’s narrow corridors, where staffers for months have worked in proximity largely without masks, what had long been an atmosphere of invincibility turned into one of apprehension and panic. 'People are losing their minds,' said the outside adviser. First, aides fretted about their own risks of exposure. If the president got infected, so might they. Then they considered the political implications, coming so close to the Nov. 3 election. 'We don't want to be talking about coronavirus and now we're talking about coronavirus,' the outside adviser said. 'The hit writes itself: He can't protect the country. He couldn't even protect himself.' Then they considered the reality that the president could actually get very sick. Trump was unusually quiet Friday, not appearing before cameras nor even calling into Fox News Channel by phone, as he does from time to time."

October 3, 2020

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tells Fox News that Trump's blood oxygen levels had "dropped rapidly" Friday morning. A source familiar with the President's health said "the President's vitals over last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We are still not on a clear path to a full recovery." Two sources said in separate interviews with the New York Times that Trump had trouble breathing and that his oxygen levels had dropped, causing his doctors to give him supplemental oxygen then transfer him to Walter Reed.

One of the White House aides who works the closest to Trump, Nicholas Luna, has tested positive, a White House official confirmed to CNN. Chris Christie announces that he has tested positive. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who had been in the same room with senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis, tests positive.

Trump had told staffers wearing masks in meetings to “get that thing off,” an administration official said. Everyone knew Trump viewed masks as signs of weakness. “You were looked down upon when you would walk by with a mask,” said Olivia Troye, a top aide on the coronavirus task force who resigned in August and has since endorsed Joe Biden, citing Trump's "flat-out disregard for human life." Trump mocked Biden for wearing masks and White House reporters for being "politically correct." Trump's family refused to wear masks at the first presidential debate in Cleveland. According to Gabriel Sherman, Hope Hicks "is said to be frustrated with Trump for taking such a cavalier approach to the virus. She was one of the few West Wing staffers to wear a mask in meetings, which her colleagues chided her for." Sherman added that Hicks was "made fun of because she wore a mask," according to a friend.

October 4, 2020

Trump’s doctors have offered generally rosy assessments of his condition, but the medical details they disclosed — including his fluctuating oxygen levels and the decision to begin treatment with a steroid — suggest that he may be suffering a more severe case of Covid-19 than has been acknowledged. Trump’s doctors have revealed that his oxygen levels had at times dropped to levels that can indicate compromised lungs. This symptom occurs in more severe Covid cases. Trump has been prescribed dexamethasone, a steroid used to head off an immune system overreaction that kills many Covid patients. The drug is usually reserved for patients with severe cases, because it has not been shown to benefit those with milder cases and may be risky.

“The dexamethasone is the most mystifying of the drugs we’re seeing him being given at this point,” said Dr. Thomas McGinn, physician-in-chief at Northwell Health, who explained that the drug is normally not used unless the patient’s condition seems to be deteriorating. “Suddenly, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at him,” Dr. McGinn said. “It raises the question: Is he sicker than we’re hearing, or are they being overly aggressive because he is the president, in a way that could be potentially harmful?”

“When I think about people needing dexamethasone, I think about people who are escalating their condition, who are heading closer to I.C.U. level than to home,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Using multiple drugs could reduce their effectiveness and increases the risk of harmful interactions, said Dr. McGinn. “You’re giving remdesivir, you’re giving dexamethasone, and you’re giving monoclonal antibodies,” he said, referring to the experimental treatment by Regeneron. “No one’s ever done that, not to mention famotidine and some zinc and a mix of cocktails, or whatever else he’s on.”

Considering all this, the assertion by Trump’s doctors that he could be discharged as early as Monday astonished infectious disease experts. Experts were mystified by an early release despite the aggressive mix of treatments Trump has received.

“My impression is they are telling us everything that is of good news and limiting everything that is not perfect,” said Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Absolutely not,” William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University’s medical school, said of the idea of sending Trump back to the White House on Monday. “I will bet dollars to doughnuts it’s the president and his political aides who are talking about discharge, not his doctors,” Schaffner added.

Trump leaves Walter Reed for a photo-op in an armored Chevy Suburban. “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr. James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, tweeted. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

Phillips added: “That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play.”

October 5, 2020

Why the rush for Trump to be discharged from Walter Reed, which infectious disease experts seem to consider premature, unwise and potentially dangerous? According to a CNN source, Trump is concerned the sight of him being hospitalized “makes him look weak.” This would also explain Trump's SUV photo-op and the mixed messages emanating from the White House and his doctors.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announces that she and two of her staff have tested positive for the coronavirus.

October 6, 2020:

Stephen Miller tests positive, bringing the number of Trump-related infections to 23, including: Trump himself, Melania, Chris Christie, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, John Jenkins, Greg Laurie, Mike Lee, Nicholas Luna, Ronna McDaniel, Kayleigh McEnany, Miller, Charles W. Ray, Bill Stepien, Thom Tillis, and four White House press secretaries, three journalists and a military aide.

 Washington DC has 105 new coronavirus cases, the most since very early June. This new surge seems to center around Trump himself.

Trump continues to shamelessly lie, tweeting: “Our Economy is doing very well. The Stock Market is at record levels, JOBS and unemployment also coming back in record numbers. We are leading the World in Economic Recovery, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

General Gary Thomas, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Marine Corps, tests positive and may have been infected by Admiral Charles W. Wray, who met with Trump on Sept. 27. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are forced to quarantine and work from home. Has Trump infected both the White House and the Pentagon with his reckless disregard for science and common sense?

"While our military can still operate while leadership is quarantined, the national security implications of the president's recklessness cannot be overstated," Rep. Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said earlier this week following news of the Joint Chiefs' quarantine. The Washington Democrat added, "Our adversaries are always looking for any weakness to exploit. President Trump's pathetic attempts to exude strength aren't fooling anyone – Americans know he is weak and so do those who wish us harm."

According to USA Today, a former director of the CDC and a "public health titan who led the eradication of smallpox" has asked the current CDC director to expose the failed U.S. response to the new coronavirus, calling on him to "orchestrate his own firing to protest White House interference." Dr. William Foege, a renowned epidemiologist who served under Democratic and Republican presidents, expressed in a private letter to CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield his alarm over how the agency has fallen in stature while the pandemic rages across America. Foege called on Redfield to openly address the Trump administration's efforts to manage the COVID-19 crisis and then accept the political sacrifice that would follow. He recommended that Redfield commit to writing the administration's failures — and his own — so there was a record that could not be dismissed. “You could upfront, acknowledge the tragedy of responding poorly, apologize for what has happened and your role in acquiescing,” Foege wrote to Redfield. He added that simply resigning without coming clean would be insufficient. “Don’t shy away from the fact this has been an unacceptable toll on our country. It is a slaughter and not just a political dispute.”

October 8, 2020

Want to hear the best Trump joke ever? Trump told Fox Business: "I'm back because I am a perfect physical specimen and I'm extremely young!"

October 9, 2020

Trump tells Rush Limbaugh on his talk-radio show that he was in bad shape and that without wonder drugs "I might not have recovered at all from covid." Trump said he asked his doctors how bad it was for him, and they told him, “You could have been very bad." You were going into a very bad phase." But Mr. Mixed Messages told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, "I think I would have done it fine without drugs. You know, you don’t really need drugs."

This from the Washington Post:

The White House had a superspreader event, Anthony S. Fauci — the nation’s top infectious-disease expert — said Friday, as the circle of infections in President Trump’s orbit widens, with many cases identified among attendees at a largely mask-free event in the Rose Garden late last month. Fauci’s comments came on the same day that an administration official said Trump will resume public events this weekend, beginning with an outdoor speech at the White House.

“I think the data speak for themselves,” said Dr. Fauci. “We had a superspreader event in the White House. And it was in a situation where people were crowded together, were not wearing masks.”

More than 150 guests attended the Sept. 26 Rose Garden ceremony where Trump announced his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. It was held despite the District's ban on gatherings of more than 50 people. Attendees mingled indoors and outdoors without masks, sometimes hugging and shaking hands.

October 11, 2020

Trump claims to be "immune" with a "protective glow" although he is apparently still infected with the coronavirus because there has been no report of him testing negative. The White House keeps dodging the question of when Trump last tested negative.

October 12, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci says Trump is “asking for trouble” by beginning to host crowded rallies again: “We’ve seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks, the data speak for themselves. It happens. And now is even more so a worse time to do that, because when you look at what’s going on in the United States, it’s really very troublesome.”

Fauci also directly called for the Trump campaign to take down an ad it recently released that uses a statement from him out of context. The ad falsely frames comments Fauci made in March to suggest that he is praising Trump’s overall pandemic response. Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he considers the misleading ad “disappointing.” Asked whether he thought the ad should be taken down, Fauci said, “I think so.”

At a rally in Central Florida, Trump said, “I feel so powerful. I’ll walk into that audience. I’ll walk in there, I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women and the — everybody, I’ll just give you a big fat kiss.”

October 14, 2020

Barron Trump, the 14-year-old son of Donald and Melania Trump, tests positive. So much for Trump's often-repeated claim that children are immune, or virtually immune, to the coronavirus.

October 15, 2020

While Trump claimed to be "immune" to the coronavirus and to radiate a "protective glow" that can presumably protect people around him, it turns out that he's still infected and still testing positive. No surprise really, from President Pants-on-Fire.

Trump's male chauvinism was on full display during his most recent Town Hall self-immolation. Trump, who is underwater with female voters, sarcastically expressed his contempt for moderator Savannah Guthrie, who asked him some tough point-blank questions. At one point Trump muttered beneath his breath, but still audibly, “Ha Ha. So cute.” As one critic noted, "For a fleeting second we get a glimpse of all the animosity, all the malice, all the narcissism, all the misogyny and contempt this man feels towards women. You can just hear it in his voice."

This account of the exchange between Trump and Guthrie is from the New York Times:

“Why aren’t you asking Joe Biden questions about why doesn’t he condemn Antifa?” Mr. Trump asked her.
“Because you’re here,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“So cute,” Mr. Trump responded, in a condescending tone that was unlikely to endear him to the suburban women voters he has been trying to win back.

October 16, 2020

Former White House chief of staff and Marine General John Kelly has told friends that Trump "is the most flawed person" he's ever known. "The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it's more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life," the retired Marine general told friends, according to CNN.

October 25, 2020

Five Mike Pence staffers, including chief of staff Marc Short, close aide Zach Bauer and outside adviser Marty Obst, test positive. Pence refuses to quarantine himself.

October 29, 2020

Trick or Treat?  Donald Trump Jr. was asked by Laura Ingraham about Dr. Sanjay Gupta's recommendation that anyone who attends a Trump campaign rally should self-quarantine for two weeks. Trump Jr. responded: "I mean, give me a break, Laura, the reality is this ... if you look, I put it up on my Instagram a couple days ago, because I went through the CDC data because I kept hearing about new infections, but I was like, 'Well, why aren't they talking about deaths?' Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing."

But on that day 1,004 Americans died with COVID. Are 1,004 deaths in a single day "almost nothing"? That would be over 400,000 deaths in a single year — is that "almost nothing"? Were all the deaths in all American wars since WWII "almost nothing"? Well, the coronavirus has killed more Americans than all those wars combined.

October 31, 2020

Trick or Treat? Trump's campaign rallies between June and September may have caused some 30,000 coronavirus infections and more than 700 deaths, according to a new study by Stanford University economists. The study examined the impact of 18 rallies held between June 20 and Sept. 30, by comparing spread of the virus after each event to parts of the country that didn't host rallies. The findings illustrate the risks of not heeding public health warnings to wear masks and avoid large gatherings to mitigate the risks of Covid-19. The authors of the released working paper included B. Douglas Bernheim, the chair of Stanford's economics department.

Nov. 3, 2020

Trump appears to have a chance of winning the presidency on election day, but state after state turns blue and Joe Biden wins the popular vote by more than 4 million votes and also wins the electoral college handily.

Trump hosts an election night party that turns sour at 11:20 p.m., when Fox News calls Arizona for Biden with 73 percent of the expected vote counted — a "screeching of tires" that brought the party to a halt, according to one official present. This account is based on interviews with 11 current and former Fox News and Trump officials, all of whom spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity "to discuss the sensitive dynamics between Fox News and Trumpworld." Trump "erupted in anger," telling White House subordinates to “get that result changed,” a senior administration official said. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows "phoned Fox News’s decision desk repeatedly." Top aide Hope Hicks, who returned to the White House from a stint at Fax, messaged Raj Shah, a former Trump White House staffer she had hired at Fox, about "how to get the call reversed." Kellyanne Conway contacted Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier to complain. Jared Kushner reached out to Fox Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch.

But of course Fox's call proved accurate.

Was the election night party a super-spreader event? The Nov. 6-8 articles suggest that may be possible ...

Nov. 6, 2020

Trump’s defeat is certain and his chief of staff Mark Meadows tests positive for the coronavirus as the nation sets a new single-day record for confirmed cases with 132,700. Meadows traveled with Trump in the run-up to Election Day and had appeared in public earlier in the week without a mask as Trump falsely declared victory.  He also appeared maskless at the Nov. 3 election night party mentioned above.

Nov. 8, 2020

HUD director Ben Carson tests positive. Carson was spotted maskless at a Trump campaign rally in Waterford Township, Michigan on October 30 and again maskless at an election-night party attended by a maskless Mark Meadows.

As the pandemic continues to escalate and set single-day infection records, Trump has a new strategy: he plans to host more super-spreader rallies after losing the election both in the electoral college and by 4.6 million in the popular vote!

Nov. 9, 2020

As Trump works fiendishly and feverishly to overturn the 2020 election and negate the will of 330 million Americans, lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by Trump's "zero tolerance" at the border now say the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents was underreported and is actually 666, according to an email obtained by NBC News.

Nov. 20, 2020

Donald Trump Jr. tests positive, as does Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew Giuliani, who is a White House aide. In addition Hannah McInnis, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, tests positive.

The US has 195,500 new cases, a global and US record, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The US has now passed 12 million cases, by far the most in the world. During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly asserted that the US was “rounding the turn”  and that Americans would hear a lot less about the pandemic after the election. But more than 2,000 Americans died from Covid on a single day, the highest figure since May. The only corner we have rounded so far leads upwards.

Nov. 21, 2020

Trump finally admits the coronavirus is running wild in the US, when he tweets: "The Fake News is not talking about the fact that 'Covid' is running wild all over the World, not just in the U.S."

Dec. 6, 2020

Rudy Giuliani tests positive.

Dec. 8: 2020

Jenna Ellis, a prominent Trump lawyer, tests positive. She had attended a West Wing Christmas party four days earlier, raising fears of another White House super-spreader event. West Wingers brought their families to the party and Ellis was seen mingling without a mask.

Dec. 9, 2020 to Jan. 19, 2021

I have decided to stick to the pandemic and not overwhelm this timeline with Trump's treasonous lies and acts of sedition. During this time period, American coronavirus new infections and deaths continued to soar, while Trump did (as far as I can tell) nothing to even attempt to slow the tide. Trump limited his activities during this period to lies, acts of fraud and sedition, campaigning for the 2024 election with more super-spreader events, whining, sulking, rage-tweeting, and playing golf.

Jan. 20, 2021

This was Trump's last day in office, after all his attempted coups failed. Where did his corrupt, treasonous, lie-filled presidency leave us?

The United State passed 400,000 coronavirus deaths on Trump's last day in office. And to show once again how dishonest Trump is, and how uncaring he is of other people's lives, Trump and Melania were vaccinated secretly before they left the White House. Why secretly, when being vaccinated in public would have reassured millions of Trump supporters that the vaccines are both safe and necessary? Once again Trump put his ego and narrow self-interests over other people's lives. He had lied once again, claiming to be "immune" to the disease, so now he declined to tell the truth. Trump wants to appear "strong" even though he is obviously growing older and frailer, and having trouble navigating not-so-steep inclines. Thus Trump will not tell the simple truth, even when it would save many, many lives. In short, Trump is a killer of his countrymen. His lies are lethal lies. An honest president could have saved many lives, but Trump is an inveterate liar.

As explained in the introduction to this timeline, according to different teams of epidemiologists, Trump could have saved 350,000 to nearly 400,000 lives during his tenure as president, if he had told the truth and acted more quickly and competently. Other nations have proved this was possible, by greatly limiting their coronavirus cases and deaths: for instance, our neighbor Canada, densely populated Japan and Singapore, and nations like Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Cuba, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and South Korea. Even China, the original epicenter of the disease, and financially strapped Argentina, Greece, Liberia and Senegal have done many orders of magnitude better than the USA under Trump.

As the old saw goes, "the proof is in the pudding," and other nations have demonstrated that our nation's staggering death toll was neither necessary nor unavoidable.

According to MoveHub, the United States, despite all its wealth, power, influence and resources, has the world's worst coronavirus response. Why? The single person most responsible is the man at the top, who claimed Americans would never grow tired of "winning" with him at the helm: Trump.

One of the most effective strategies for combating the coronavirus in the more successful nations has been for everyone to simply wear masks. But Trump refused to wear a mask for most of his term, and mocked others who did, including Joe Biden, who tried to set a good example for the nation. Hell, Trump even mocked White House staffers who wore masks in his presence, with the result that the White House became an epicenter for the disease — with Trump himself acting as the hub.

If, as many American Christians believe, there are no accidents with God, it seems significant that the United States passed 400,000 covid-related deaths on Trump's last full day in office. When Trump left office on January 20, 2021 there were at least 404,284 deaths of Americans attributed to the coronavirus according to Johns Hopkins University, but the actual tally is surely much higher because so many Americans died untested. Thus, in Trump's last year as president, more Americans died from covid than all the Americans, military and civilian, who died as a result of World War II. According to JHU, when Trump left office there had been at least 24,365,741 cases of coronavirus in the US, but that number is also artificially low due to insufficient testing.
 
Donald Trump and the number 666

At a rally in Iowa in 2016, Donald Trump said: "I like money. I'm very greedy. I'm a greedy person. I shouldn't tell you that, I'm a greedy — I've always been greedy. I love money, right?

The Bible says a man cannot serve two masters: If he loves money, he will hate God. Trump just told us that he loves money. These are the top ten connections of Trump to the number 666 ...

(1) The Trump family bought the most expensive single building ever purchased in the United States, at 666 Fifth Avenue, a street that symbolizes money (Mammon). Trump obviously loves Mammon because he gold-plates his toilets and brags about his wealth and the "beautiful pieces of ass" he acquires with it. Thus, according to the Bible, because he loves money, Trump cannot love God. The 666 tower appears in the movies Exorcist II: The Heretic and The Wolf of Wall Street. The 666 skyscraper (a modern Tower of Babel) is home to Lucent (Lucifer) Technologies and its RFID microchip (the Mark of the Beast). Lucent has technologies called Inferno, Styx and Limbo.



The picture above is 666 Fifth Avenue, a street symbolic of money (Mammon), materialism, hubris and power. The most expensive single building in the U.S. was purchased by the Trump family! Furthermore, Trump's other New York City properties form a pentagram around the 666 centerpiece!

(2) The Trump family paid $1.8 billion for the most expensive building on record. And 18 = 3*6 = 666. The 666 tower was purchased through Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. (The Bible tells us that the city of Babylon was founded through Kush by his son Nimrod. The name Jared means "descendent," so his name literally means "son of Kush," which can be interpreted as "son of Babylon.")



The movie The Omen was released on 6-6-6 (June 6, 1976). Many people have mentioned the striking resemblance between Damien Thorn and Jared Kushner.

(3) The Trump family is also in the process of building a $666 million tower at One Journal Square. According to multiple reports the height will be 666 feet.

(4) Another Trump Fifth Avenue property, the famous Trump Tower, is 203 meters tall according to multiple reports. And 203 meters = 666 feet.



The Trumps live in a gold-and-diamond-encrusted penthouse on the Trump Tower's 66th floor, complete with paintings of Apollo and erotic statues of the pagan Greek sex god Eros and his consort Psyche. Trump Tower is a modern Tower of Babel, a pagan Ziggurat complete with hanging gardens like those of Babylon, in the form of an inverted pyramid (pictured above). And please keep in mind that Kush, the son of Ham who was cursed by God, was the founder of Babylon. Of course Jared Kushner is Trump's son-in-law, meaning that his daughter is now Ivanka Kushner.

(5) Donald Trump inherited his grandmother's real estate empire when she died on June 6, 1966 = 6-6-6. Her name was Elizabeth Christ Trump. The family business name at that time was E. Trump & Son. Elizabeth means "oath" so her full name may be interpreted as "oath for Christ to be trumped [i.e., outranked and upstaged through trickery]."

(6) As reported by reputable news services like The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Fortune, in the first fiscal year of Trump's presidency which started in 2016 (666+666+666+6+6+6) the budget deficit swelled to 666 billion dollars! (Fox Business and CNN Money reported the same figure, so this is something everyone can agree on.)

(7) The Trump surname is an anglicized version of the German name Drumpf ...

• In Jewish gematria and English Sumerian gematria the value of the letters in Don Drumpf is 666. (Don being both his abbreviated first name and meaning "powerful ruler.")
• Donald John Drumpf in American ASCII computer code is 666.
• Donald Trump called himself the Brexit candidate and Don Brexit in American gematria is 666.
• Brexit Trump yields 966 in Jewish gematria, 996 in English gematria, and 166 in simple gematria. "I Am guiding you" also yields 966 in Jewish gematria.
• Donald Trump said that he should be called "Mr. Brexit" and since his family is German that would be Herr Brexit, which yields 669 in Jewish gematria.
• Donald John Trump's real name in German is Donald Johann Drumpf and each name has six letters = 666.
• There are multiple reports of Trump flashing the Illuminati triple-six hand sign = 666.
• The Trump coat of arms contains three number six symbols = 666.

The Trump coat of arms (on the right below) contains three snakelike number six symbols in mirror images on the left and right. The tails of the three lions in the center shield form a third snakelike 666. There are more snakelike sixes in the branches and leaves. The Trump coat of arms was quite obviously copied from the Davies family coat of arms (on the left). The word Integritas (Integrity) was replaced by Trump (Deceit) and the gaudy golden sixes were added. Joseph Edward Davies was the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite who built the Mar-a-Lago resort. The Davies family has considered suing Trump over the stolen coat of arms, according to BBC and New York Times articles.



(8) Trump first made racist remarks about Hispanic immigrants on June 6, 2015 = 6+6+(1+5) = 666. His fearmongering comments about "rapists" and "drug dealers" vaulted him to the top of the polls. On the same date, 6-6-6, speaking to a packed room in Raleigh, NC, Trump announced that the "American dream is dead" and only he can resurrect it. Only he, not even God Almighty, can "make America great again."

(9) Trump announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 2015 = 6+(1*6)+(1+5) = 666. On the Ides of March, he had 666 delegates (image below). The Ides of March marked a turning point in Roman history, as the Roman Republic became a Roman Empire ruled by a succession of dictators. On October 28, 2016 the FiveThirtyEight website had Trump with a 66.6 percent chance of winning the election in Utah, the citadel of Mormonism.



The number 666 denotes arrogance, pride, egotism, the love of money and power, and militarism: all things Donald Trump brags about as if they were virtues.

(10) The 2016 election was "all Trump all the time" and 2016 = 666+666+666+6+6+6.

(11) On February 2, 2018, the day Trump allowed the Nunes memo to be published—in a blatant attempt to smear the FBI and destroy public confidence in the bureau's integrity—the Dow Jones stock market index dropped 666 points.

(12) Trump has been praised and endorsed by leading Baptist pastors like Jerry Falwell Jr., David Jeremiah, Robert Jeffress and James F. Linzey. The last hymn in the Baptist Hymnal is hymn number 666.

(13) Donald Trump spends hours watching and being influenced by the Fox network, and the letters in "Fox" add up to 666 according to three different methods! To see how, please click here: FOX 666.

(14) As Trump works fiendishly and feverishly to overturn the 2020 election and negate the will of 330 million Americans, lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by Trump's "zero tolerance" at the border now say the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents was underreported and is actually 666, according to an email obtained by NBC News.

If there are no accidents with God, what is God trying to tell His disciples?

Other indications that Trump is the Antichrist:

There was a total lunar eclipse on the day Donald Trump was born (June 14, 1946). A total lunar eclipse is known as a "blood moon." The Bible prophesies that the moon will turn to blood before "the great and terrible day of the LORD." The eclipse started on 6-14-6 and ended on 6-15-6. Of course 1+5=6, so the blood moon ended on 6-6-6 and that was Trump's first full day on earth! Trump's birthdate has a Julian date of 2431986. Exactly 666 days later, on Julian date 2432652 (April 9, 1948) the horrific Der Yassin massacre took place in Israel, making peace impossible thereafter.

Most Christians are aware of the "budding of the fig tree" as a sign of the end times. The budding of the fig tree is interpreted to be the rebirth of Israel as a nation. Trump was born in 1946, the year the US reversed its position on the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel. On the eve of Yom Kippur, 1946, President Harry S. Truman issued a statement indicating, for the first time, official U.S. support for the creation of a "viable Jewish state." And on the very day that Trump was born (June 14, 1946), the Jewish Haganah blew up eleven bridges that had connected the soon-to-be state of Israel to unfriendly neighboring states, signaling to the British government that further delays in Jewish immigration were not acceptable. (Many Jewish immigrants were fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust, as WWII had recently ended.) That act of defiance, called "The Night of the Bridges" and "Operation Markolet," may be considered the actual beginning of the Jewish state of Israel, and its first major united military offensive. The Palmach Information Center calls Operation Markolet "the largest and most comprehensive of all the Jewish Resistance Movement's operations." And Operation Markolet was successful, because within a few months the British government announced that it would remove all its troops from the region. It was the removal of British troops from Palestine that, more than anything, allowed Israel to become a reality. But Trump's relationship to Israel is extremely doubtful. He has made it clear that all he cares about is "winning" himself and acquiring money and power. He has accepted gifts and accolades from the House of Saud, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, who do not recognize Israel at all. The oil-rich nations surrounding Israel have a lot more money and influence than Israel. Trump has already reneged on his promise to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Why? And the Bible says that the Antichrist will talk about "peace" while betraying Israel.

The day Trump was born (June 14, 1946) the Baruch Plan was unveiled. The U.S. representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, Bernard Baruch, proposed U.N. control of all nuclear weapons. Baruch opened his remarks by saying, "We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead." One historian later offered the opinion that "the Baruch Plan was the nearest approach to a world government proposal ever offered by the United States."

Before the election, Trump invited Japan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia to develop nukes, so that the U.S. can save money on defense. After Trump became president, ballistic missiles were fired by Iran, North Korea and Russia. Is destabilizing the world in the best interests of Americans, or is it part of the Antichrist's "master plan" to master the planet? After all the hard work Ronald Reagan did to reduce American and Russian nuclear weapons, Trump announced that he wants to "greatly expand" nuclear weaponry. So what will happen if the United States greatly expands its nuclear weapons? Obviously nations like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea will accelerate their nuclear programs ... and the world will become even more dangerous. Ronald Reagan did not want to "greatly expand" nukes. He wanted the opposite and helped make it happen. Why does Trump want a new, incredibly expensive and dangerous nuclear arms race?

Trump claims to be a Christian but he obviously has never read the Bible and doesn't live by it. The Bible says that a man who loves Mammon cannot serve God, but will hate God.

The Pyramid is one of the most important Illuminati symbols. The large base represent us, the little people at the bottom, while the capstone represent the 0.001% ruling from atop the capstone. Donald Trump is seen making the Illuminati sign twice, which was also made by Adolph Hitler (insert).



There are more 666 connections on this page, along with predictions by Nostradamus that sound exactly like Donald Trump, including his "wall" ...



It should come as no surprise that the microchipping of Americans has begun during Trump's watch. This was front-page news in the August 6, 2017 issue of USA Today. The microchips allow employees to be scanned and identified by computers and can be used to authorize or decline purchases and other transactions. Where were such chips originally designed and developed? As explained later on this page, the Trump family purchased the most expensive building in the history of America, at 666 Fifth Avenue, a street symbolic of money (Mammon). Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump paid $1.8 billion for the building, which is 6+6+6 billion. The 666 tower is home to Lucent (Lucifer) Technologies and its RFID microchip (believed by many Christians to be the prophesied Mark of the Beast). Lucent has technologies called Inferno, Styx and Limbo. The 666 building appears in the movies Exorcist II: The Heretic and The Wolf of Wall Street, so these facts are common knowledge. And what about rumors of wars and signs in the heavens? Immediately below the microchipping article was another article about a Perseid meteor shower that was predicted to be the brightest in human history. Since Trump was elected there has been one natural disaster after another, including two thousand-year hurricanes within a few days of each other. In the past, such heavenly events were taken as omens. For instance, the star that led the Magi to the manger where the Christ child lay. But in Trump's case, all omens seem to be dark, and are rapidly getting darker and more nightmarish ...

And please make no mistake that American neo-Nazis who chant "Hail Trump!"―just as their German predecessors once chanted "Heil Hitler!"―are virulently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. The Charlottesville neo-Nazis were "obsessed" with Jews, according to reporters. On their antisemitic websites the neo-Nazis posted calls to burn a local synagogue, the Congregation Beth Israel. They stationed men armed with assault weapons across the street from the synagogue as Jews prayed inside. Shades of the Holocaust! These neo-Nazis love Trump. They praise Trump. They worship Trump with cries of "Hail!" which echo the German "Heil!" And they want to burn synagogues to the ground. If that doesn't trouble you, God help us all. If it does trouble you, then it's time to resist the Nazis and their hero of racism and intolerance: TRUMP. Trump did his best to defend the neo-Nazis by saying that both sides were to blame. That's like saying Jews would have been to blame if they had resisted what the Nazis did to them during the Holocaust. It's like saying that our heroic defenders who fought and died in World War II to end the Nazi menace were "just as guilty" as Hitler and his goons. Is this a Christian talking, or is this the logic of the Antichrist? Should Christians support someone who supports Nazis? As Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, explained: "Make no mistake, the extreme right considers many people their threat, but it always, always, always comes back to the Jews." He also observed that "Trump harnessed this movement and also injected energy into it." Why is Trump defending Nazis and acting as if the people who oppose them are equally to blame? Well, his father was arrested at a KKK rally and the KKK is also virulently anti-Jewish. And Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is an admirer of Satan and Lenin:

I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment.―Stephen K. Bannon
Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power.―Stephen K. Bannon

Donald Trump and Benito Mussolini: Striking Parallels

Why did Trump go to Saudi Arabia, as his first official visit as the American president? Why did Trump bow down submissively before the Saudi king to accept the golden Collar of al-Saud? (Trump's campaign director Roger Stone tweeted that he wanted to "puke" when he saw Trump bow down to accept the gilded collar.)

The Bible says that the Antichrist will talk about peace, only to betray Israel. Trump is on record saying that Saudi Arabia should be allowed to have nukes. But he also claimed there was "very profound" information that the Saudis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, referring to a 9-11 Commission report that was classified at the time. Trump evidently had inside information, because 28 pages of the report were later declassified and high-ranking Saudis, including Prince Bandar, were implicated. Trump said that he would ban Muslims from entering the United States for security purposes, but not his rich Muslim friends, which include the Saudi royal family! Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, maintaining a hard-line position. Trump said that he will be "neutral" on Israel and has already weaseled out of his promise to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, while criticizing the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Bible prophesies that the Antichrist will be a "little horn" who rises up, spouting great words and pretending to offer world peace, only to betray Israel in the end. A trump is a small horn. The ancient Hebrew prophets predicted a "Trump of Doom." Were the prophets speaking literally? The attempted military coup in Turkey is another reason not to let Saudi Arabia obtain nukes. Do we really want unstable Middle Eastern states to have WMDs? Trump has predicted catastrophes at every turn, claiming that he alone can "save" us, as if he is Savior of the World rather than God Almighty. But what are his REAL intentions? Why does he want Saudi Arabia to have nukes, after the 9-11 attacks and considering the Saudi royal family's antagonism toward Israel and its alleged support of radical Islam and ISIS? Why does Trump speak so highly of murderous thugs like Putin, Assad, Saddam, Jong-un and Duterte? And why does the number 666 keep popping up over and over, in relation to The Donald and his family?

More Donald Trump 666 Connections

Here are more Trump 666 connections, including predictions of Nostradamus ...

Trump's first foray into politics was announced in a 1986 New York Times article dated 6-6-6 explaining that The Donald would trump Mayor Koch by building a long-delayed Central Park rink through "sheer force of will."

Trump entered the political world at the biblical age of 40. According to Trump himself, the critical first meeting with New York City officials took place on 6-6-6 in his office.

The Trump SoHo Hotel Condominium, called an "artists' enclave" by Donald Trump, was announced on The Apprentice on June 6, 2016 = 6-6-6. The project raised cries of fraud, deception and mismanagement.

On the same date, 6-6-6, an article in Christian Science Monitor predicted that "Pragmatism May TRUMP Zeal as Iran's Power Grows."

On the same date, 6-6-6, there was a TruthDig article titled "The Eve of Destruction." The opening line of the Barry McGuire song "Eve of Destruction" is "The eastern world it is exploding!" Trump seems intent on making it explode.

In the Heidi Klum video in which she responds to Trump's sexist remark that she is no longer a ten, Klum wears a t-shirt inscribed with the number 9.99. Upside down, that is 666.

In the Sex and the City pilot which aired 6-6-1998 (1998=666+666+666), Mr. Big is based on Donald Trump, Samantha calls Mr. Big a "young Donald Trump," the Twin Towers are prominent, and Carrie says "Self protection and closing the deal are paramount."

The Bible's first 666 reference is the weight in talents of gold that King Solomon collected each year (1 Kings 10:14, 2 Chronicles 9:13, Ezra 2:13); Trump loves gold so much that he gold-plates his toilets.

The number 666 is the sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel; Trump has owned casinos and during his presidential campaign announced his intention to build a new multi-million-dollar casino in Las Vegas.

Richard Rorty's book Achieving Our Country predicted a Trump presidency in 1998, and 1998=666+666+666.

On October 28, 2016 the FiveThirtyEight website had Trump with a 66.6 percent chance of winning the election in Utah, the citadel of Mormonism.

On June 9, 2016 = 696 = Donald Trump sent his infamous tweet about Hillary Clinton's missing 33,000 emails and promised a "major Hillary speech," mere hours after Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had what appears to have been a treasonous backdoor meeting with Russian government agent Natalia Veselnitskaya. Reince Priebus was also photographed walking into Trump Tower the same day and his appearance was noted by AP reporter Jonathan Lemire in a tweet. This is also the time that Roger Stone predicted that Trump would "destroy" Hillary Clinton.

On March 6, 2009 (the sixth day of the third month = 3*6 = three more sixes), the S&P bottomed out at 666. On that day, Donald Trump told CBS News that he was "gobbling up" properties in Washington D.C. (Little did anyone at the time know that the property he had in mind was the White House!) At that time Trump predicted that the national unemployment rate would rise to over 10%, which didn't happen under the Obama administration. Was Trump predicting what would happen when he became president and started stocking his cabinet with Goldman Sachs donors? Recently an article titled "The Barron's Bomb!" stated: "Last week, BARRON'S magazine suggested the bull market that began March 2009 at 666 will not end until it 'tops out" when the NASDAQ hits 6666." Donald Trump used the name John Barron as an alias, and his youngest son's name is Barron. Is the "bomb" he predicted about to be dropped on the American people?

House Resolution 666 lifted the ban on U.S. oil exports, at a time the earth is overheating, ice caps and glaciers are melting, and untold numbers of innocent animals face extinction. Donald Trump enthuses about the U.S. being an energy exporter, including "beautiful clean coal." But of course no one can burn coal or oil without releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The solution is not to export and burn more coal and oil, but to create "green" energy. But Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accords, refusing to be responsible about man's responsibility to the earth and its myriad creatures. What on earth can the Creator think about what Trump intends to do to his creation? BTW, HR 666 was later renumbered to HR 702 to disguise its devilish intentions.

Trackdown Trump: Did a 1958 TV Show Predict Trump?

Nostradamus

Did Nostradamus predict Donald Trump as a modern-day Antichrist when he spoke of "The false trumpet concealing madness" that will change money and standards?

Nostradamus also predicted: "The trumpet shakes with great discord. An agreement broken: lifting the face to heaven: the bloody mouth will swim with blood; the face anointed with milk and honey lies on the ground." Israel is "the land of milk and honey." The Bible predicts that the Antichrist will betray Israel. Did Nostradamus see and predict the same thing? Trump has said that he will be "neutral" regarding Israel. But will he, really?

Did Nostradamus predict Trump's wall as well: "The republic of the great city will not want to consent to the great severity: King summoned by trumpet to go out, the ladder at the wall, the city will repent."

Nostradamus again: "The great Senate will ordain the triumph for one who afterwards will be vanquished, driven out: At the sound of the trumpet of his adherents there will be put up for sale their possessions, enemies expelled."

Matt Haig, a best-selling British writer, wrote a Facebook post about Trump that concludes: "It might be the end of the world. But we still can't switch to another channel." To his surprise, the word count was 666.

Trump goes to church for Easter and Christmas. He collects Bibles but doesn't seem to read them and certainly doesn't live by them. His daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism.

Through his German ancestors named Christ and Trump, Donald inherited millions of dollars and a vast real estate empire. Will he now attempt to "trump" (upstage) Christ and rule by deceiving the very elect?

Trump certainly seems to see himself as everyone's master and ruler: for instance, if anyone protests at one of his rallies, he has them silenced and thrown out, ignoring their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

Trump mocked Ted Cruz, calling him a "pussy," for not being as anxious as Trump to resort to torture (waterboarding). What sort of man mocks and insults other people for not endorsing torture?

Donald called the situation in the Middle East akin to "medieval times" and said "I'd bring back waterboarding, and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding." He sounds anxious to get started.

The anti-Christ is supposed to be a sort of "reverse twin" of Jesus Christ, as if Lucifer became flesh and tried to become the Savior of the world. And Trump is certainly proclaiming himself to be the only possible Savior!

Trump claims to be a Christian but said he never asks God for forgiveness and he denigrated Holy Communion by speaking dismissively of the "little bread" and "little wine," suggesting that HE is much bigger and more important!

And yet Trump is being praised and endorsed by evangelical Christians like Sarah Palin, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham, along with Mr. Putin and many neo-Nazi and KKK types!

According to the Bible, the Antichrist will be a Great Deceiver, misleading even the very elect. Donald Trump is as far from Jesus Christ as a man can be, and yet Christian leaders are embracing him!

What is Trump's plan? He says, "If I'm elected president, we will win, and we will win, and we will win." He seems to care only about winning, not about what is right, or compassion, or justice.

Trump's main claims to fame are insulting people as he fires them, building casinos, gold-plating toilets, bragging about all the "beautiful pieces of ass" that he's bedded, and always doing the opposite of what Jesus Christ would do.
Is something not kosher about this picture?

Related pages: Donald Trump: 666 Mark of the Beast, Donald Trump Antichrist, FOX 666, Donald Trump Hypocrisy, Donald Trump Russia Gog and Magog, Donald Trump and Benito Mussolini: Striking Parallels, Donald Trump Violence Quotes, Donald Trump Russia Quotes, Trump's Fears, The Trump Bible, Donald Trump's War on Women, The Republican War on Women, Donald Trump Sexism Timeline, Did Sir Walter Raleigh Prophesy Trump?, Is Donald Trump a Christian?, Trump Trivia, Donald Trump Campaign Slogans, Donald Trump Nicknames, Melania Trump Nicknames, Jared Kushner Nicknames, Ivanka Trump Nicknames, Donald Trump Jr. Nicknames, Mark Meadows Nicknames, Anthony Scaramucci Nicknames, Mitch McConnell Nicknames, Jeff Sessions Nicknames, Steve Bannon Nicknames, Sarah Huckabee Sanders Nicknames, Judge Roy Moore Nicknames, Paul Ryan Nicknames, Donald Trump Cabinet Nicknames, Trump 45 Nicknames, Ted Cruz Nicknames, Marco Rubio Nicknames, Famous Nicknames, Donald Trump Epigrams, Donald Trump Puns, Donald Trump Limericks, Donald Trump Poetry, The Best Donald Trump Jokes, The Best Trump Russia Jokes, Trump Halloween Ideas, Trump Christmas, James Mattis Resignation Quotes, Delusional Donald Trump Quotes, Donald Trump vs. Ronald Reagan, Trackdown Trump: Did a 1958 TV Show Predict Trump?, The Best Donald Trump Jokes of Michael R. Burch

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