April 3, 2020

Trump attacks Schumer for impeachment in letter about coronavirus crisis

Source: Axios

President Trump accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of being "missing in action" during the coronavirus crisis, writing in a scathing letter on Thursday that Schumer's focus on the "ridiculous impeachment hoax" resulted in New York being ill-prepared for the pandemic.

Why it matters: It's a blistering response to Schumer urging Trump to assign a senior military officer to enforce the Defense Production Act to produce more medical supplies.

The big picture: The president formally authorized the use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic ventilator production on Thursday, and said he had appointed White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to enforce the act last week.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-schumer-impeachment-4455884d-14c1-4a7d-9886-de158667bc57.html

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Read the actual letter, it's piss-poor behavior for any public servant, much less an elected servant.

Here's a direct link to read the letter, in case you don't see the link in the Axios article:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6824332-Trump-letter-to-Schumer.html

excerpt:

“If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the ‘invisible enemy’,” Trump wrote.

Wow. Just wow.

April 2, 2020

Peter Navarro @ Trump Presser just now, "we're doing these things in 'Trump Time'"

Peter Navarro speaking.

Fuck you assholes.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1245840611418267649?s=20

Fuck you and fuck your group and your PR crew of liars.

Fuck. All of you. Adding details as they come in.

https://twitter.com/kenolin1/status/1245840710726606848?s=20

April 2, 2020

Embedded link includes Trump's worst attacks on journalists.

The headline seems not to match the video, but the video is well worth watching and sharing.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/barack-obama-donald-trump-coronavirus-climate_n_5e843653c5b6871702a6e17d

April 2, 2020

Trump announces enhanced counternarcotics operation at coronavirus briefing (and related story)

What a fucking distraction. Fuck.

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Trump announces enhanced counternarcotics operation at coronavirus briefing

Trump administration officials announced Wednesday that the U.S. military would send naval ships and aircraft to the Caribbean as part of an enhanced counternarcotics operation.

President Trump and other top officials discussed the operation at the top of a White House coronavirus briefing Wednesday evening. Trump said it was important not to let drug cartels “exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the Pentagon would deploy additional ships, aircraft and security forces to the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility as part of the operation.

“At a time when the nation and the Department of Defense are focused on protecting the American people from the spread from the coronavirus, we also remain vigilant to the many other threats the country faces,” Esper told reporters.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/490704-trump-announces-enhanced-counternarcotics-operation-at-coronavirus

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In an earlier story, the same General Milley who spoke today warned that the virus matter will last for months, into the summer::

Milley warns of ‘social breakdowns’ in other countries facing coronavirus; US crisis could last months

Government forecasts predict the coronavirus will continue to spread throughout the United States for roughly three months based on its impacts on other nations, said Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He and Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged the U.S. military community to prepare to take health protection measures, which could include social distancing, possibly into the summer months.

“You’re looking at probably late May, June, maybe something as late as July,” Milley said during a virtual town hall broadcast with Esper from the Pentagon. “But we will get through it. It’s not a question of when. We will get through it, and we’ll pull together as a country and a military and we … will do whatever is required to defend the people of the United States.

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/milley-warns-of-social-breakdowns-in-other-countries-facing-coronavirus-us-crisis-could-last-months-1.623559

April 2, 2020

List of my favorite Coronavirus links: State graphs, charts, maps, updated daily

Peak numbers come at different times for different states. Here in California we can expect peak demand for beds to come at the end of April but for NY and NJ it's just two weeks out.

Other states, in that sense, are our future. Stay safe, everyone!

My go to links are these:

https://covidactnow.org/ Projections for each state, individual graphs

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections Also, graphs for each state

https://ncov2019.live/data/usa

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/03/tracking-coronavirus-u-s-real-time-visualizations/

This last one is interesting, yet frightening, it maps variants of the constantly mutating virus:

https://nextstrain.org/ncov