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► President Trump is disputing — despite recordings of his own voice — that he downplayed the coronavirus pandemic by inventing himself a new word: “Up-played.” As NBC News reports:
President Donald Trump told a voter that he did not downplay the coronavirus in the early days of his administration’s Covid-19 response — even though he has been heard on tape saying he did — during an ABC News town hall Tuesday.
“If you believe it’s the president’s responsibility to protect America, why would you downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities?” a voter asked Trump.
Trump responded: “Yeah, well, I didn’t downplay it.I actually, in many ways, I up-played it in terms of action.” [Pols emphasis] The voter appeared to try to follow up and remind the president that he acknowledged having downplayed the threat of the coronavirus in a taped interview with journalist Bob Woodward earlier this year.
During the town hall, Trump said that many people don’t want to wear masks and claimed that “there are a lot of people think that masks are not good.”
Asked who those people are, the president said, “Waiters. They come over and they serve you, and they have a mask. And I saw it the other day where they were serving me, and they’re playing with the mask. I’m not blaming them. I’m just saying what happens. They’re playing with the mask, so the mask is over, and they’re touching it, and then they’re touching the plate. That can’t be good.”
As The Hill reports, Trump also came up with a new turn-of-phrase regarding one potential approach to combating the pandemic:
President Trump defended his assertion that the novel coronavirus would “disappear” with or without a vaccine on Tuesday, saying the United States would develop what he called “herd mentality.”
“With time it goes away,” Trump said during an ABC News town hall in Pennsylvania when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos on his public comments about the virus. “You’ll develop, you’ll develop herd — like a herd mentality. It’s going to be, it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen. That will all happen. But with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly.”
Trump was (probably) referencing “herd immunity,” which is a different thing than “herd mentality” (you’re on your own trying to explain “herd-developed.”) Medical experts say that “herd immunity” would require both a vaccine and at least one million coronavirus deaths in the United States; “herd immunity” is thus more of a consequence than a strategy.
The Washington Post fact-checked Trump’s ABC News appearance and might have run out of ‘Pinocchios.’
► Roughly half of the students at Cherry Creek High School near Denver have been moved to remote learning because of a COVID-19 outbreak being blamed on a weekend party.
► The Colorado Springs Independent looks at the potential election fallout from President Trump’s persistent denigration of the military.
► As The Durango Herald reports, Republican Congressional candidate Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert is having trouble keeping her origin story straight. This may be partially because her talking points don’t make a ton of logical sense.
A nurse who worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Irwin County, Georgia and four lawyers representing clients there are claiming that immigrant women are routinely being sent to a gynecologist who has left them bruised and performed unnecessary procedures, including hysterectomies.
The doctor, who three lawyers identified as Dr. Mahendra Amin, practicing in Douglas, Georgia, has continued to see women from the Irwin County Detention Center for the past several years despite complaints from his patients.
Amin was the subject of a Justice Department investigation in 2015 for making false claims to Medicaid and Medicare. As a result, he and other doctors involved paid $525,000 in a civil settlement, according to the Justice Department.
The lawyers identified the doctor after a whistleblower complaint to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security was filed by Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse inside the facility. She said in the complaint that detainees were not getting Covid-19 tests and other needed medical care. The complaint was first reported by the Intercept.
► Congressman Ken Buck (R-Greeley), who moonlights as the State Republican Party Chairman (or vice versa) has nothing better to do than to complain about a French independent film on Netflix.
► It appears that Colorado won’t have much of a problem attracting poll workers in 2020. ► State Rep. Daneya Esgar (D-Pueblo) gets a nice award for her work on issues that affect people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
►President Trump says the United States came “much closer” to war with North Korea than the public was led to believe. Neat.
Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
► Mother Nature does indeed have a sense of humor. A Republican State Senator in Oregon, who participated in a walkout of the state legislature in 2019 as a protest against a Climate Change vote, has lost his home to the Beachie Creek wildfire.
► Republican Congressional candidate Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert is using her Facebook page to…remind people of her mugshot from a prior arrest:
So much winning!
ICYMI
► It makes total sense, in a completely-nonsensical way, that Republicans would embark on another attempt at recalling Gov. Jared Polis.
Now the university and school administrators begin (or continue) the "blame the students game." Sorry, but all of this was completely predictable, and by unrealistically expecting HS and college students to behave like perfect little 45 year old adults is a failure of leadership. Yeah, blame the kids for their misconduct. But blame the administrators for the unrealistic, arrogant optimism in heading back to in-person learning.
1) Get the students, particularly incoming freshmen, on campus any so you can for the start of fall semester so you can capture that revenue for room and board, etc.
2) COVID, quite predictably, starts to spread like wildfire
3) " transition " to 100 % online/remote learning a few weeks after opening due to COVID outbreak with all that cash in the bank
September 16, 2020 10:05 AM UTC
4 Comments
1,422 Americans died from COVID yesterday. The president is tweeting about football.
Now the university and school administrators begin (or continue) the "blame the students game." Sorry, but all of this was completely predictable, and by unrealistically expecting HS and college students to behave like perfect little 45 year old adults is a failure of leadership. Yeah, blame the kids for their misconduct. But blame the administrators for the unrealistic, arrogant optimism in heading back to in-person learning.
1) Get the students, particularly incoming freshmen, on campus any so you can for the start of fall semester so you can capture that revenue for room and board, etc.
2) COVID, quite predictably, starts to spread like wildfire
3) " transition " to 100 % online/remote learning a few weeks after opening due to COVID outbreak with all that cash in the bank
4) Profit !
Too bad Trump has no sense of history. If he looked it up, he'd use Newt Gingrich's defense of his indefensible words to get a free pass.