What would a day in the life of the U.S. Government, American politics, Donald Trump, and the Media be if we didn’t see a bomb or two drops in the midst? Tuesday was no exception. Let’s take a look at several of the bombs that dropped and which of those exploded.
Dr. Fauci Might be Back in the Trump Doghouse
Rumors of President Trump firing Dr. Anthony Fauci were supposedly debunked by the President and the doctor on Monday. But Dr. Fauci seems determined to keep himself front and center to be the next to leave the White House through the doghouse.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that the U.S. does not have the testing and tracing procedures necessary to safely begin reopening the economy amid the coronavirus crisis, while warning that the White House’s May 1 target may be a “bit” too optimistic.
In an interview, Tuesday with The Associated Press, Fauci, underscored the need for critical testing before returning to normal. “We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet,” Fauci said during his interview with The Associated Press.
Fauci’s comments come as President Trump and others in the administration are weighing how to reopen sectors of the nation’s economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The White House extended social distancing guidelines through April 30 and has floated the possibility of potentially reopening some areas by May 1.
Fauci, though said that May 1 is “a bit overly optimistic” for many areas of the country, while suggesting that much of the social-distancing rules should occur on a “rolling” basis, rather than all at once, due to the coronavirus striking different parts of the country at various times over the last several weeks.
Here’s the key to this: Fauci also warned, yet again, that once restrictions are rolled back, and the economy begins to reopen, there are likely to be new outbreaks of COVID-19.
“I’ll guarantee you, once you start pulling back, there will be infections,” Fauci told the AP. “It’s how you deal with the infectious that’s going to count.”
He added that the key is “getting people out of circulation if they get infected, because once you start getting clusters, then you’re really in trouble.”
Bloomberg Hides Facts to Cover for China
The news network owned by former presidential Michael Bloomberg finds itself in the bullseye of the China Communist Party. Why? Because of the subject of investigations into super-wealthy and very politically connected members of China’s class of elites.
It began in China in 2012, when a team of hard-nosed journalists at Bloomberg News started investigating the ties between the Communist Party and the country’s wealthiest citizens.
Their reporting hit a little too close to home, and the higher-ups at Bloomberg News killed it, firing the reporter who questioned the decision and attempted to silence his wife by pressuring her for years to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The incredible story details all of the intrinsic circumstances behind Bloomberg’s decision to give-in to threats by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because Bloomberg did not want any pushback from Beijing. They didn’t stand by their reporters. Not only did Bloomberg abandon their reporters, but they also went further – much further. They tried to get author Leta Hong Fincher, who was the wife of Bloomberg Beijing correspondent Mike Forsythe, also to keep quiet. “They thought that because I was the wife of their employee, I was the employee and they could tell me what to do,” she said. “I was just a ‘thing’ in their employee’s life. I was not a human being.”
Forsythe was part of Bloomberg’s team that was investigating how China’s elite class had become and had maintained massive wealth. For their exposure to some of those details, they found themselves in the bullseye of a target Beijing put on Bloomberg’s China operations. “Warnings” came from Beijing to Bloomberg about not publishing reports like that again.
Bloomberg’s China team didn’t stop, however. They kept digging deeper. They dug into Chinese leaders’ ties to Wang Jianlin, the country’s richest man. And then the investigative team made a big boo-boo: they focused on the family of President Xi Jinping. When those investigations kicked off, editors at Bloomberg seemed excited and pressed forward. But, suddenly, orders came from “Big Daddy” to “call off the dogs.”
The reasons for the retreat? “Follow the money.” Bloomberg in China makes millions from the sales of their servers and other equipment along with software to the Chinese government. It was inevitable that someone in Beijing was going to reach out to someone in Bloomberg’s China management team and put the kibosh on any additional embarrassing stories. The rest is history.
Where was Michael Bloomberg when all of this was happening? He was at the driver’s wheel of the largest U.S. city – New York – as Mayor. He claimed numerous times he was not involved with Bloomberg News, but Bloomberg’s own reporters say he was in regular contact and shared his vision for expansion in China.
This directly contradicts statements he repeatedly made.He also shot down the idea that Bloomberg News would ever back down from publishing a story.
“Nobody thinks we are wusses and not willing to stand up and write stories that are of interest to the public and that are factually correct,” he said at a news conference while he was still mayor.
Michael Bloomberg portrayed himself while a candidate for 2020 as president painted an “I don’t care about money” picture for the public. Apparently, that wasn’t so.
President Trump to the WHO: “You’re Fired!”
President Trump announced at the White House coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), saying it had put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.”
Trump declared that the United States “will be forced” to pursue other options as it reviews why the WHO had caused “so much death” by “severely mismanaging and covering up” the coronavirus’ spread.
“We have deep concerns over whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump said, accusing the WHO of failing to adequately keep the international community apprised of the threat of the coronavirus.
“The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” Trump said. He added that the WHO had ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could of having from human to human.
As early as late December, Wuhan medical staff were suspected to have contracted the disease, indicating likely human-to-human transmissibility.
On January 4, in a statement first flagged by The National Review, the head University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Infection warned that “the city should implement the strictest possible monitoring system for a mystery new viral pneumonia that has infected dozens of people on the mainland, as it is highly possible that the illness is spreading from human to human.”
The Chinese government also began suppressing news about the virus. Nevertheless, on January 8, the WHO declared: “Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks.”
Ballot Harvesting: Clinton Lawyer to Sue Nevada unless harvesting allowed
A prominent Democratic lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is threatening to sue the state of Nevada unless it immediately suspends prosecutions for ballot harvesting before the June 9 primary, among a slew of other demands, according to the letter.
Marc Elias, now representing the Nevada Democratic Party, also called for substantial expansion to in-person voting access in the upcoming primary — though just days ago, he said it was a “national disgrace” that Wisconsin was moving ahead with in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. (In both cases, he cited health concerns.) Democrats had feared that high turnout in Wisconsin would hurt their chances, while they have a more optimistic outlook in Nevada.
Writing on April 10 to Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, Elias first aimed at Nevada Revised Statutes section 293.330(4), which prohibits ballot harvesting and permits only specific individuals, like family members, to return ballots. Ballot harvesting, or the practice of allowing political operatives and others to collect voters’ ballots and turn them in en masse to polling stations, has drawn bipartisan concerns of fraud from election watchers.
In his letter, Elias argued that “many Nevada voters will not be able to return their mail-in ballots themselves and do not have family members – or are separated from these family members because of social distancing – who can do so for them.”
“We ask that your office and the office of the Nevada Attorney General immediately announce a suspension of prosecutions under this statute for all elections for which mail-in balloting will be the primary means of voting in the state,” Elias said.
At the same time, Elias called for Nevada to stop throwing out ballots when signatures on voters’ ballots appear different from those on voters’ registrations, saying “lay election officials have never had the necessary expertise” to make an accurate determination.
“In an environment where the vast majority of Nevada voters will be casting a mail-in ballot for the first time, there is the real possibility that hundreds of thousands of Nevada voters could be disenfranchised due to the arbitrary determinations of these untrained officials,” Elias wrote. In the alternative, Elias said that those found to have mismatched or missing signatures should be given an additional two weeks, instead of the standard one-week deadline, to clarify the matter.
Elias also demanded that Nevada “require mail-in ballots be sent to all registered voters in Nevada, not just those in an active status.” Elias asserted that state election law doesn’t distinguish between the two categories of voters.
Republicans have argued that many states fail to clean up their voter rolls adequately. Last year, California was forced to remove 1.5 million ineligible voters after a court settlement when California’s rolls showed a registration of 112 percent.
Further, Elias urged that Nevada “require more than just one in-person vote center per county in the State’s most populous counties as well as those with geographically distant population centers.
“Nevada voters have a proud tradition of voting in person either during the early voting period or on election day,” Elias wrote. “Having only a single in-person location in each county poses certain risks and hardships to voters in various circumstances—voters in dense urban communities, for example, will be forced into dangerously overcrowded polling places, while rural voters will have to travel unreasonable distances just to cast their ballots.”
On April 6, though, Elias called it a “national disgrace” that “may well cost lives” when the Wisconsin Supreme Court blocked an order to shut down in-person voting there. “No one should have to choose between voting and their health,” Elias wrote on Twitter.
Elias, among other things, is known for his role hiring private research firm Fusion GPS to probe Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign – efforts, which resulted in the discredited anti-Trump dossier.
Summary
Two big questions dominate “brain-time” of most Americans: How do I keep any members of my family from infection by COVID-19 Coronavirus? Secondly, how long will it be before we can get back to work in the U.S.?
Both questions are critical to 300 million+ Americans. Coronavirus and being out of work when appearing in tandem have paralyzed the nation. Because of the importance of these two, much of the normal lives of most Americans have changed quickly and changed dramatically. But life goes on. And the important things that were important pre-Coronavirus are essential today and will undoubtedly be important post-Coronavirus. Maybe, just maybe, the ratings in our minds we assign to the importance of life events may have already changed a bit because of our pandemic. There’s nothing like a little extra pressure to clear the junk out of the fact bucket. When that happens, facts look more significant and more critical. Why is that? When they’re in the fact buck without any junk, facts are more visible, and we see them more clearly.
I’ll close with this: in the next several weeks, our lives are going to change even one more time! As our governments find ways to steer us out of the Coronavirus quarantine quagmire, making those moves will happen suddenly. Before we know it, our lives will be back in our schools, restaurants, churches, theaters, streets, the homes of our friends and relatives, and we’ll be “Corona-Free!”
I’m confident we’ll all be a little more thankful for our lives when that happens. There’s nothing better for giving us a proper perspective than a pandemic that shuts down the whole country! I’ve got more eye on the target like never before in my life. I’m locked on and focused. I’m ready to be back in the saddle.
What about you?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
