May 26, 2020

Widower of Scarborough staffer asks Twitter to remove Trump's conspiracy theories

Source: POLITICO






Klausutis also wrote of the enduring pain his wife’s loved ones feel over her early death, and how the conspiracy theories have made it harder for them to move on. | Matt Rourke/AP Photo

By ELI OKUN 05/26/2020 08:57 AM EDT


The widower of a woman whose 2001 death has become fodder for baseless conspiracy theories spread by President Donald Trump is appealing directly to the head of Twitter to take down the president‘s tweets.

“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Timothy J. Klausutis wrote in a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, which was dated last week but gained attention Tuesday when the New York Times’ Kara Swisher published it in an op-ed.



Klausutis’ late wife, Lori, died at age 28 from a fall precipitated by an undiagnosed heart condition, as confirmed by the medical examiner and police. Nineteen years later, her death is making headlines because of her employer at the time: then-Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.). She was working in a Florida office, while Scarborough was in Washington at the time of her death.

But now Scarborough is an outspoken — and, thanks to his MSNBC talk show “Morning Joe,” prominent — critic of Trump. So fringe conspiracy theories that have circulated in the past began to bubble up again, intimating he might have murdered Lori Klausutis. The president and his family were quick to pick up on the thread in multiple tweets this month.

I....................................

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/26/scarborough-twitter-trump-conspiracy-281738

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Bet Trump continues.

https://twitter.com/fineout/status/1265266106404667392?s=20

May 26, 2020

Intelligence Officials Reportedly Struggle To Brief Trump Because He's Like A Giant Toddler

https://twitter.com/Irishman727/status/1265025161490829313?s=20




Intelligence Officials Reportedly Struggle To Brief Trump Because He’s Like A Giant Toddler
The president has blamed the intelligence community for failing to alert him to the coronavirus threat, but officials say he rarely reads briefings and can't pay attention


.https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/intelligence-officials-reportedly-struggle-to-brief-donald-trump-because-hes-a-giant-toddler



By Eric Lutz May 21, 2020


Donald Trump tours a maskproduction facility May 5.



Donald Trump tours a mask-production facility May 5.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump has blamed his intelligence officials for failing to alert him to the gravity of the coronavirus threat, which he spent nearly two months ignoring and downplaying as it escalated. “They did NOT bring up the CoronaVirus subject matter until late into January, just prior to my banning China from the U.S.,” he tweeted this month, overstating the action he took in the early days of the crisis. “Also, they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner.” But according to a New York Times report Thursday, it wasn’t so much that intelligence agencies didn’t warn him about the looming pandemic—it’s that Trump is, as he might put it, a “low IQ individual” who cannot understand or pay attention to his briefings.

Trump, current and former intelligence officials told the Times, has “a short attention span,” frequently “veers off on tangents,” and “rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports.” He “rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview,” the officials said. And, perhaps most critically, he is “particularly difficult to brief on critical national security matters”—like, for instance, a public health crisis of a scale not seen in a century. Trump allies like Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, have spun his unique approach to briefings as the work of a maverick “questioning the assumptions and using the opportunity to broaden the discussion to include real-world perspectives.” But the Times report, like others before it, paints a portrait of an easily-distracted president who is too lazy to do the basic work of his job and who relies instead on rumors and opinions offered in conservative media and from pals like retired golfer Gary Player.

Trump has been infamously resistant to briefings throughout his presidency; already distrustful of intelligence agencies, regarding them as part of the “deep state” that supposedly tried to prevent his presidency and has since worked to undermine it, he has also reportedly struggled to pay attention to briefings that don’t have his name strategically peppered throughout them. Such inattention and incompetence would be bad under any circumstance. But the pandemic, which has killed nearly 100,000 in the U.S. and more than 328,000 globally, has thrown into stark relief the danger of having a careless idiot blindfolded at the wheel.

The president was briefed more than a dozen times in January and February about the coronavirus threat, ignoring warnings about the crisis and minimizing its significance until it was too late—at which point he promptly began shifting the blame, politicizing the disaster, and now pressuring states to reopen their businesses whether or not they meet the safety benchmarks his own administration outlined. His delay in acting appears to have had devastating consequences; according to a new study out of Columbia University Wednesday, imposing social distancing restrictions even a week earlier could have saved at least 36,000 Americans’ lives......................................

May 26, 2020

Human COVID vaccine trials begin in Australia

https://twitter.com/i/events/1219057585707315201?s=13
This is a very small sample size. Stay tuned.


https://twitter.com/7NewsMelbourne/status/1265074110863798272?s=20


Human COVID vaccine trials begin in Australia
Rod McGuirk

Monday, 25 May 2020 6:59 pm


US biotechnology company Novavax says a proven vaccine could be ready by the end of the year. File image. Credit: Getty

A US biotechnology company is beginning human trials in Australia of a coronavirus vaccine, with the hopes of releasing a proven vaccine this year.

Novavax has begun the first phase of the trial in which 131 volunteers in Melbourne and Brisbane will test the safety of the vaccine and look for early signs of its effectiveness.

“We are in parallel making doses, making vaccine in anticipation that we’ll be able to show it’s working and be able to start deploying it by the end of this year,” said the company’s research chief Dr Gregory Glenn.

Glenn was speaking at a virtual press conference in Melbourne from Novavax’s headquarters in Maryland.

About a dozen experimental vaccines are in early stages of testing or poised to start, mostly in China, the US and Europe.
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May 24, 2020

Baltimore Mayor To Donald Trump: Don't Come Here During #Coronavirus Lockdown "Please stay home!"

As far as I know, Trump is still going to Baltimore.





Baltimore Mayor To Donald Trump: Don’t Come Here During #Coronavirus Lockdown
“Please stay home!” tweeted Jack Young, who urged the president to cancel his Memorial Day visit to the city.
https://huffpost.com/entry/baltimore-mayor-donald-trump-coronavirus-lockdown-visit_n_5ec78eb4c5b674179cf22b21?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

https://twitter.com/moonbreeze2/status/1264547626315366401?s=20






05/22/2020 05:31 am ET Updated 1 day ago
Baltimore Mayor To Donald Trump: Don’t Come Here During Coronavirus Lockdown
“Please stay home!” tweeted Jack Young, who urged the president to cancel his Memorial Day visit to the city.
headshot
By Lee Moran

Baltimore Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young has urged President Donald Trump to cancel his scheduled Memorial Day visit to the city, which remains under a stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Please stay home!” Young, a Democrat, tweeted at Trump on Thursday.

In a statement shared on Twitter, Young said Trump was sending “the wrong message to our residents, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 virus” with his planned trip to the Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine.

“I wish that the President, as our nation’s leader, would set a positive example and not travel during this holiday weekend,” Young added........................

May 24, 2020

Riding on the White House grounds.

Riding on the White House grounds.

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1263862843985756160?s=20

https://twitter.com/Zebrafarm2000/status/1263931016068161537?s=20


#GoJoe #GoJoe2020 #GoJoe #GoJoe2020
#GoJoe #GoJoe2020 #GoJoe #GoJoe2020
#VoteBlueToSaveAmerica2020
#VoteBlueToSaveAmerica2020

May 24, 2020

Donald Trump campaign plans $1 million advertising attack after Biden's black voters comment

I have been busy last few days but I have read that the RW and the bots on twitter are really pounding Joe on this one. damn



Donald Trump campaign plans $1 million advertising attack after Biden’s black voters comment


The Donald Trump campaign is planning to launch a $1 million advertising attack centered around Joe Biden’s comment Friday to a popular black radio host that if anyone is struggling to decide whether to support Biden or President Donald Trump in the general election then he “ain’t black.”

The campaign has seized on the remarks since Biden made them in an interview on the radio show “The Breakfast Club” in which host Charlamagne Tha God told Biden he should come to the studio in New York City for another interview, telling the former vice president that “we’ve got more questions.”

“You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”............
.......

Biden addressed his comments in a call with the US Black Chamber of Commerce, saying, “I shouldn’t have been so cavalier” and insisting he doesn’t take black voters for granted.

Read More :

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/23/politics/trump-campaign-biden-advertisements/index.html

May 23, 2020

San Diego Judge Dismisses OAN's $10 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against Rachel Maddow

Source: kpbs.org




Saturday, May 23, 2020



A federal judge Friday dismissed a $10 million defamation lawsuit filed by the owners and operators of the San Diego-based One America News Network against MSNBC and political commentator Rachel Maddow for telling her viewers last summer that the conservative network "really literally is paid Russian propaganda."
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Bashant ruled that Maddow's statement "is an opinion that cannot serve as the basis for a defamation claim," and thus is protected under the First Amendment.

The San Diego-based judge ruled that most viewers would be able to conclude that Maddow was forwarding her opinion when she made the July 22 statements.

"For her to exaggerate the facts and call OAN Russian propaganda was consistent with her tone up to that point, and the court finds a reasonable viewer would not take the statement as factual given this context," Bashant wrote. "The context of Maddow's statement shows reasonable viewers would consider the contested statement to be opinion."

In a motion to dismiss the case, Maddow's attorneys allege Herrings Networks was not objecting to anything from the Daily Beast article, and conceded that Rouz worked for an organization affiliated with the Russian government.

Maddow's attorneys maintained that her comments during the segment were opinions based entirely on the Daily Beast story, and "she nowhere indicates that she has separate knowledge about Mr. Rouz or the funding of OAN other than from that article."

..............

Read more: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/may/23/san-diego-judge-dismisses-oans-10-million-defamati/

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article said they will appeal this decision.

May 23, 2020

Trump has a new money maker

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1263113203749453827?s=20


https://twitter.com/pantomath__/status/1263114178228826112?s=20


https://twitter.com/pantomath__/status/1263114178228826112?s=20

May 23, 2020

Neera Tanden has the coronavirus..........

I have always enjoyed her commentary. . This virus is indeed scary.





Neera Tanden
@neeratanden
I have the coronavirus. I’ve been sick for a week, and really, really fatigued, with muscle pain. So far, thankfully, no fever and my oxygen levels are fine. But I was super careful, wore masks, carried hand sanitizer. Haven’t really socialized with friends.


https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1264222872521920512?s=20


Replying to
@neeratanden
I only went out for necessities and wore masks. And did nature walks. This is obviously a very transmissible virus. People need to take a lot of care and the idea we can just reopen is very scary.



Grant Stern
@grantstern
·
3h
Replying to
@neeratanden
Glad you hear that you're not suffering the worst illness, but sorry to hear that you are sick. Feel better soon!
Vanita Gupta
@vanitaguptaCR
·
3h
Replying to
@neeratanden
So sorry @neeratanden
Wishing you speedy recovery.
🙏🏽
Michael McFaul
@McFaul
·
1h
Replying to
@neeratanden
Neera, so sorry to read this. Keep strong.
Jo
@JoJoFromJerz
·
3h
Replying to
@neeratanden
Oh no!! Please get better soon!
Susan Rice
@AmbassadorRice
·
3h
Replying to
@neeratanden
So sorry, Neera. Stay strong. We are with you. Sending love.
Neera Tanden
@neeratanden
·
3h
🙏🏼
Wajahat "Social Distance Yourself" Ali
@WajahatAli
·
56m
Replying to
@neeratanden
I hope you rest and recover quickly, Neera.
BrooklynDad_Defiant!
@mmpadellan
·
2h
Replying to
@neeratanden
So sorry to hear this, @neeratanden
. Get well soon! We need your voice out there! Praying for you.
Red heart
Folded hands
Doc Yshuaben Moshe™
Rose
@drrichardpaul
·
2h
We need her voice? Really? For what? She fights against workers every chance she gets.
8 more replies
Neal Katyal
@neal_katyal
·
3h
Replying to
@neeratanden
Oh no. Im so sorry. Am hoping you get better quickly.
7 more replies


Andy Slavitt @
House with garden
@ASlavitt
·
1h
Replying to
@neeratanden
Neera, stay healthy. We need every ounce of your strength.

May 23, 2020

Biden has 46% to 43% lead in Wisc. poll.

State polls suggest Biden has a clear national lead
CNN Digital Expansion 2018 Harry Enten

Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN

The next 6 plus months will be so so so so long --


https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/state-polls-2020-analysis/index.html

1017 GMT (1817 HKT) May 18, 2020



(CNN)Poll of the week: A new Marquette Law School poll finds former Vice President Joe Biden with a 46% to 43% lead over President Donald Trump in Wisconsin.



The poll matches the last poll from Marquette, which also had Biden up by 3 points in Wisconsin.


What's the point: One of the big questions when we look at national polls is whether or not they're an accurate representation of what is going on at the state level. One of the easiest ways to check is to compare state poll results to the past presidential vote in a given state. I did so for all telephone polls that called cell phones since the beginning of April.

When we average out these state polls, they suggest that Biden's running about 6 points ahead of Hillary Clinton's final margin.
In other words, the state level polls suggest that Biden has a national lead of around 8 points. .....



.....