It's not like I'm saying it was a good thing. But you can bet his supporters are going to eat it up.

3/30/2020 10:48:00 AM

You're clearly taking some bites too

3/30/2020 11:17:09 AM

How? I feel like our nation's response has been bungled since the beginning. It is unfathomable to think that we didn't start preparing in January. I've talked to Trump supporters about this, and all they can say is "but he cut off travel to/from China."

3/30/2020 11:20:26 AM

It's insane to still try to call his off the cuff diseased brain ramblings as "genius". If you thought he had anything in mind behind "open by Easter" other then his own personal best interest, you are honestly a fool. Fox New might try to spin it that way, but they'll spin anything.

And honestly, it's a bad move even the way you spelled it out. He stated very strongly something that was shown wrong like 3 days later. My money says he calls any references to easter as "fake news" going forward, he won't want anything to do with that statement.



In 2020 after everything we've seen and experienced: "genius move!"

[Edited on March 30, 2020 at 11:24 AM. Reason : Foh]

3/30/2020 11:23:12 AM

Lol it’s almost certainly because his hotel in DC was hosting a massive reopening brunch on Easter.

Why anyone ever tries to pin some genius on a guy who is so manifestly impulsive and self-interested is beyond me.

3/30/2020 11:41:16 AM

So, again it's another brilliant move by Trump. He, for some inexplicable reason is allowed to set his own definition of success or failure instead of you know, allowing people to make accurate judgements on his response compared to how other countries and governments have reacted to the same crisis. Brilliant, so, as long as he keeps the deaths under his arbitrary number of 100,000, he's a winner.

3/30/2020 2:02:46 PM

are you and earl roommates?

3/30/2020 2:04:09 PM

lovers

3/30/2020 2:44:12 PM

Do I hate how he's manipulating the country to set up his own goal posts? Yes

Is it impressive that he is able to pull this off so easily? Yes, yes it is.

3/30/2020 3:28:27 PM

Wait, do you really think if 99,900 people die that will be seen as some barometer of success?

Like, he was barely polling positive on his handling of COVID-19 before there was even 1,000 deaths. But that x100 is going to give him a boost???

3/30/2020 3:39:38 PM

at this point that wouldn't surprise me. every day he spews out some demented nonsense that just contradicts something else he said days or weeks before. his supporters buy every last bit of it no matter how illogical that might be.

if trump says he did a good job, and fox news says he did a good job... in their minds he did a good job. it's as simple, stupid, and unacceptable as that

[Edited on March 30, 2020 at 4:01 PM. Reason : ]

3/30/2020 3:59:45 PM

^^^I might agree that it's impressive were it not for the fact that: For literally decades, right wing media has been conditioning a significant subset of the population to disregard other news sources and to trust in them (and only them) for the truth.

It's not too difficult to get away with all sorts of this BS when you have that many decades of a well oiled propaganda machine supporting you. Even an idiot could do it. An idiot is doing it.

3/30/2020 4:06:25 PM

Maybe I'm giving Earl too much credit, but for a troll Earl is smart enough to makes his posts seem intelligent. Well ridiculous I guess, but we'll argued ridiculous if that makes sense.

Banjo is dumb, or at least his tww persons is...

3/30/2020 4:33:38 PM

Having a modicum of respect for the competition doesn't make one "dumb" or foolish... it makes you a smart competitor. I know that it's easy to just say "he's an idiot, preaching to idiots, and that's the way it's always been" and nobody can change that, except for the fact that we've had idiot Presidents before, ahem... Bush, try to do the same shit and just trip over themselves every time doing it.

Trump knows that his favorability numbers are not as high as they should be, so he has taken pretty good steps in the past couple of days to set himself up for a political success when this is all over with. Does it annoy me that he's yet again going to come out of a horrible situation unscathed? YES. If I were on his side, would I have done anything differently at this point? No, prolly not.

3/30/2020 5:41:36 PM

Trump leaning into these 5pm meetings as rallies

Kinda genius since no one is going to stop him, even though it’s blatantly nakedly corrupt

3/30/2020 5:51:28 PM

Quote :

"Wait, do you really think if 99,900 people die that will be seen as some barometer of success?"

To his base, yes. They're ride or die with this dude at this point, which is fitting, i suppose, as many of them are going to literally die.

But the point remains. There is nothing he can do that will be seen as a failure. That doesn't necessarily make him a genius, it's just a damning indictment on how intellectually tortured his followers are.

It's a cult.

He's their Jim Jones, David Koresh. They've bought into the notion that the news is fake and that only he and Fox News speak truth. He feeds them seedy conspiracies of shadowy outsiders who are keeping them down and preventing them from reaching greatness. They've been conditioned to reject anything that isn't party propaganda, and they retreat to memories of a mythical past that never really existed.

I mean, jesus, they're drinking fish tank cleaner because he tells them to, soo.....I 'unno.

Shame they're gonna take us all down with them.

[Edited on March 30, 2020 at 7:39 PM. Reason : ]

3/30/2020 7:31:56 PM

it's gonna be wild when we see federal assistance disproportionately flooding red states and bible belt states with governors who praise Trump, and then we'll all have to have a conversation about whether or not the president is intentionally depriving federal assistance in order to kill citizens who live in blue states.

I've got my eye on Florida, which has a bonehead governor who didn't close the beaches and was late to shelter in place even though he has a very old population. They're about to get rocked.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-fever-thermometers.html

3/31/2020 1:40:43 AM

Quote :

"it's gonna be wild when we see federal assistance disproportionately flooding red states and bible belt states with governors who praise Trump, and then we'll all have to have a conversation about whether or not the president is intentionally depriving federal assistance in order to kill citizens who live in blue states."

I guess you haven't been paying attention to the news last few days

3/31/2020 8:21:13 AM

I wonder if logistically a successful businessman as president would have been better at handling COVID-19?

3/31/2020 8:44:52 AM

The media and many here have already determined he failed at handling it before the outcome and they have no objective way of determining how well he did so as long as people die in a pandemic, that has brought well led nations to their knees, they will say Trump failed. Thats not fair.

But then again they don't even understand why they should even think about being fair to a president who they hate and who is "bad" (also subjective). They don't understand that their unfairness towards him is his biggest strength and that when they blindly hate him, it only makes his supporters blindly support him just as much. When he actually does something wrong he just point to this and say "they wanted us to fail".

Imagine declaring that the team has lost because of the coach's gameplan but its only the first quarter. Then ignoring the score to make us lose even if we win. Thats what the media is doing by saying we are the hardest hit country because we have the largest total cases. Everyone knows total cases is just a measure of how much testing you are doing. When you make claims like that , you help Trump "win" because then he can say his response is the reason why we are testing so much and have so many cases. and thats what he's doing...

This is why parameters for "winning and losing" needed to be set before the "game" started. I was the only one to set objective parameters for determining how well he does. I set them back on March 15th before this really got bad. Everyone else on here is waiting for bad shit to happen during a global pandemic so they can point at it and say "look, that bad thing happened because of Trump". Thats tacky and you come off as wanting our country to fail just to make sure Trump loses. We can criticize Trump without being tacky. Be better.

3/31/2020 10:54:44 AM

Quote :

" The media and many here have already determined he failed at handling it before the outcome and they have no objective way of determining how well he did so as long as people die in a pandemic, that has brought well led nations to their knees, they will say Trump failed. Thats not fair. "

He failed to properly prepare us for this. That's super evident (disbanding the NSC team, downsizing the CDC team in China, implying this was a hoax, not ramping up production earlier under the DPC, etc)

Quote :

" Imagine declaring that the team has lost because of the coach's gameplan but its only the first quarter. Then ignoring the score to make us lose even if we win. Thats what the media is doing by saying we are the hardest hit country because we have the largest total cases. "

Yes, imagine knowing the team didn't practice for months before hand, didn't review game film, didn't buy equipment until the last minute, etc. Even if you win, it's a fluke.

3/31/2020 10:59:17 AM

Quote :

"The media and many here have already determined he failed at handling it before the outcome and they have no objective way of determining how well he did so as long as people die in a pandemic, that has brought well led nations to their knees, they will say Trump failed. Thats not fair."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html

Quote :

"U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting."

He did fail. The media's assessment of him is fair. He is a traitor human piece of shit.

3/31/2020 11:16:21 AM

Oh of course we could have been a lot more prepared but just because we know he's not getting an A+ doesn't mean we can go ahead and give him an F. Even the best prepared countries like South Korea and China had a few blunders.

At the end of the day we were never going to be proactive about a 100 year disaster. Look at floods and storms its not much different. Part of our culture is not to plan for rare disasters. We have to wait until its really bad then react. Trump didn't usher in this capitalist mindset.

How in the hell did the establishment go from thinking we could never afford to give everyone basic healthcare to thinking we could implement pandemic prevention in less than 1 month? Hospitals were charging ~4,000 for testing early on. This system was never going to achieve South Korean testing before it became a disaster

Quote :

"Half of U.S. adults said they or a family member either postponed or skipped going to the doctor in the last year because of the cost, 2019 polling by the nonprofit health research group Kaiser Family Foundation found. “About half of the public, regardless of socioeconomic status or health condition, say they are either ‘very worried’ or ‘somewhat worried’ about being able to afford unexpected medical bills or their health-insurance deductible,” Kaiser researchers wrote."

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 11:18 AM. Reason : trump didn't create our system. he's just part of it.]

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 11:23 AM. Reason : reactionaries ]

3/31/2020 11:17:41 AM

Quote :

" Everyone else on here is waiting for bad shit to happen during a global pandemic so they can point at it and say "look, that bad thing happened because of Trump"."

Fuck you.

3/31/2020 11:21:59 AM

Quote :

"Even the best prepared countries like South Korea and China had a few blunders. "

Good one!

3/31/2020 11:24:08 AM

Trump is obviously at fault here as a moronic science denier who eliminated our pandemic response team and staffed his administration with a bunch of sycophants who don't know what they're doing.

Other people who are at fault:
1) Small government conservatives who inhibit our ability to respond to crises like these
2) Agribusiness corporations who have known for decades how their factory farming practices accelerate the evolution and spread of viruses and bacteria.
3) Again, small government conservatives (like Trump) who ignore scientists and allow #2 to happen.

So yes, this is true:

Quote :

"trump didn't create our system. he's just part of it."

But also doesn't excuse his own piss poor leadership.

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 11:43 AM. Reason : .]

3/31/2020 11:40:53 AM

https://twitter.com/brianmrosenthal/status/1245012625597104128?s=21

Speaking generally this is why testing and cases are impossible to compare state by state and country by country. NY obviously is only testing certain symptomatic segments of population to have a positive rate that high.

Per capita deaths post-pandemic are really going to be the only worthwhile measuring stick and that will take years (remember H1N1 only had around 2,000 deaths reported AT THE TIME - only models long after upped the total to what we commonly see today). That, of course, doesn't mean we can’t talk about and criticize current federal or state responses. Obviously we can and we should.

** and it’s incredibly disgusting to insinuate that by criticizing Trump or a state response it is somehow the same as actively rooting for more chaos/death. In a normal word, someone making that insinuation without evidence should be banned/ostracized

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 11:48 AM. Reason : X]

3/31/2020 11:46:22 AM

Quote :

" I guess you haven't been paying attention to the news last few days "

I'm aware of the fed forcing blue states to compete with one another for supplies and being outbid by the fed, but I am not yet aware of the inverse happening to red states. I'm anticipating that it may happen, but they haven't been hit hard enough yet to test this, unless I missed something.

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 12:48 PM. Reason : ]

3/31/2020 12:46:10 PM

https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-why-florida-got-all-the-emergency-medical-supplies-it-requested-while-other-states-did-not

This article gives "reasons" but FL got resources outstripping blue states

3/31/2020 1:12:35 PM

Jesus. We'll see how this plays out, especially if those 50% "reserves" get deployed for electoral reasons rather than life safety reasons

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 2:00 PM. Reason : ]

3/31/2020 1:47:48 PM

Quote :

"The media and many here have already determined he failed at handling it before the outcome and they have no objective way of determining how well he did so as long as people die in a pandemic, that has brought well led nations to their knees, they will say Trump failed. Thats not fair. But then again they don't even understand why they should even think about being fair to a president who they hate and who is "bad" (also subjective). They don't understand that their unfairness towards him is his biggest strength and that when they blindly hate him, it only makes his supporters blindly support him just as much. When he actually does something wrong he just point to this and say "they wanted us to fail". Imagine declaring that the team has lost because of the coach's gameplan but its only the first quarter. Then ignoring the score to make us lose even if we win. Thats what the media is doing by saying we are the hardest hit country because we have the largest total cases. Everyone knows total cases is just a measure of how much testing you are doing. When you make claims like that , you help Trump "win" because then he can say his response is the reason why we are testing so much and have so many cases. and thats what he's doing... This is why parameters for "winning and losing" needed to be set before the "game" started. I was the only one to set objective parameters for determining how well he does. I set them back on March 15th before this really got bad. Everyone else on here is waiting for bad shit to happen during a global pandemic so they can point at it and say "look, that bad thing happened because of Trump". Thats tacky and you come off as wanting our country to fail just to make sure Trump loses. We can criticize Trump without being tacky. Be better best."

FTFY

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 2:01 PM. Reason : ]

3/31/2020 2:01:11 PM

@daaaave, please expand on your #2 and how it relates to the current crisis. The virus jumped from bats to pangolins to us. Not sure how big agra relates to that specific scenario, or even our response to its arrival in the states.

Quote :

"2) Agribusiness corporations who have known for decades how their factory farming practices accelerate the evolution and spread of viruses and bacteria"

3/31/2020 2:48:20 PM

Quote :

" I was the only one"

did trump write that? the rest is stupid enough that it'd be believable

i guess since this is the first quarter and all we should just piss off until a couple hundred thousand Americans die from the disease. maybe by the second half trump will let you know what his next target is so you don't have to think too much

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 2:55 PM. Reason : ]

3/31/2020 2:48:39 PM

^^
http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/

I would recommend reading this whole thing because it's fascinating and well-written, but at least check out the section titled "There is No Wilderness". It directly answers your question better than I could.

3/31/2020 2:56:15 PM

Quote :

" The virus jumped from bats to pangolins to us"

we don’t know that for sure

3/31/2020 2:59:04 PM

Way to go out on a limb. Much isn’t known for sure, but it is highly likely.

3/31/2020 3:10:37 PM

The article I linked focuses mostly on the bat scenario.

To sum it up, factory farming has created increasingly deadly viral strains, causing distrust in pork and poultry in countries like China, and driving growth in the wild game market. Subsequently, the increasing commodification of wild game has contributed to viral diversity and spread between natural and civilian environments. "Pre-existing agro-ecological value chains simply extend into previously "wild" spheres, changing local ecologies and modifying the interface between the human and non-human."

Additionally:

Quote :

"The expansion of industrial production itself “may push increasingly capitalized wild foods deeper into the last of the primary landscape, dredging out a wider variety of potentially protopandemic pathogens.” In other words, as capital accumulation subsumes new territories, animals will be pushed into less accessible areas where they will come into contact with previously isolated disease strains, all while these animals themselves are becoming targets for commodification as “even the wildest subsistence species are being roped into ag value chains.” Similarly, this expansion pushes humans closer to these animals and these environments, which “may increase the interface (and spillover) between wild nonhuman populations and newly urbanized rurality.” This gives the virus more opportunity and resources to mutate in a way that allows it to infect humans, pushing up the probability of biological spillover."

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 3:26 PM. Reason : .]

3/31/2020 3:25:16 PM

or just watch the last 10 minutes of Contagion.

3/31/2020 4:27:38 PM

https://twitter.com/nytliz/status/1245072928619859969?s=21

If true, it seems a massive scandal at took him as long as it did to invoke the DPA for this crisis.

(Bracing for earl white knighting and explaining why this isn’t trumps fault and it’s actually the industrial-military complex)

3/31/2020 4:33:09 PM

After a statement like this

Quote :

"Oh of course we could have been a lot more prepared but just because we know he's not getting an A+ doesn't mean we can go ahead and give him an F. Even the best prepared countries like South Korea and China had a few blunders."

it is abundantly clear he's a troll. No reason to respond to him any longer.

As for the DPA aspect, no surprises there since our President is a piece of shit. But when the article says he's invoked it "hundreds of thousands of times" I have a feeling what they mean is it's been utilized that many times under his administration without anyone actually having to "implement" it. I.e., there are probably hundreds of thousands of documents/purchase orders/memos that reference the DPA as an authority under which to get something done. That is not the same as Trump calling 100,000 different people telling them to use the DPA to do something.

The only thing he's had the time to do hundreds of thousands of times is lie.

And if I'm correct regarding that NY Times article then that's an incredibly irresponsible piece of reporting, written in a manner to try and make him look worse than he already is (which is really hard to do at this point).

Now, here's something just laughable - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mcconnell-claims-impeachment-diverted-the-attention-of-trump-administration-from-coronavirus-response/2020/03/31/6cd84128-736f-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html

Quote :

"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that the impeachment of President Trump distracted the administration’s attention away from the coronavirus crisis, defending the president amid criticism of the delayed U.S. response to the pandemic."

[Edited on March 31, 2020 at 7:06 PM. Reason : a]

3/31/2020 7:03:06 PM

Quote :

" Quote : "U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting." He did fail. The media's assessment of him is fair. He is a traitor human piece of shit."

This quote only works outside of the context of what the intelligence agencies had been doing in the 3 years leading up to that. Boy who cried wolf.

Quote :

"** and it’s incredibly disgusting to insinuate that by criticizing Trump or a state response it is somehow the same as actively rooting for more chaos/death."

Criticizing Trump is one thing but some people are saying things like "he's going to be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths." . Its happening. Look at the media. They are almost wishing failure into existence.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/cbs-news-admits-mistake-after-airing-footage-of-overcrowded-nyc-hospital-that-was-actually-in-italy

Quote :

"explaining why this isn’t trumps fault and it’s actually the industrial-military complex) "

My initial guess would be thats its probably a lot more complicated to get a car company to make a ventilator than it is to use DPA to make a company that produces a certain product to produce more of that product but thats just a guess...

and OF COURSE Trump shares the blame because he took over and kept all of the pre-existing systems in place and yes, made many of them even stronger but in no way is he the head of the monster or the Dr. Frankenstein. He simply oversees AMERICAN systems that have been in place for ages. There were many overseers before him and will be many after him. He's neither the hero nor the vilain. I like to blame systems instead of finding one person to blame as a scapegoat. To me, thats lazy.

3/31/2020 11:14:31 PM

Quote :

"it is abundantly clear he's a troll. No reason to respond to him any longer."

Thanks for being QUIT REPLYING ALL EVERYONE while also replying all guy.

Shit you even quoted him...a disturbingly new trend.

3/31/2020 11:25:05 PM

^the post above you is probably the best example of why to ignore. I mean it is just that bad

3/31/2020 11:40:31 PM

https://brentroad.com/message_search.aspx?type=posts§ion=4&searchstring=earl&username=synapse&usertype=match&sortby=date&sortorder=descending&page=
https://brentroad.com/message_search.aspx?type=posts§ion=4&searchstring=troll&username=synapse&usertype=match&sortby=date&sortorder=descending&page=
https://brentroad.com/message_search.aspx?type=posts§ion=4&searchstring=ignore&username=synapse&usertype=match&sortby=date&sortorder=descending&page=
https://brentroad.com/message_search.aspx?type=posts§ion=4&searchstring=earl%27d&username=synapse&usertype=match&sortby=date&sortorder=descending&page=
Ironic someone could make a whole posting career of replies about not replying.

[Edited on April 1, 2020 at 12:09 AM. Reason : i get it you have nothing to say on politics but this isn't even witty or funny]

4/1/2020 12:05:51 AM

Quote :

"^^ CONSIDER YOURSELF OFFICIALLY CALLED OUT, YOU FAGGOT!"

4/1/2020 1:20:23 AM

The idiot comes to his senses...

https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-models-two-weeks-0dad0224-ef4e-457b-9e83-143d38d0799c.html

Quote :

"The big picture: Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said at the briefing that estimates showed between 1 million to 2 million in the U.S. could die from the virus "without mitigation." But with social distancing and strong public health measures in place, the "mountain" could be depressed to a "hill" that projects 100,000–240,000 deaths, Birx said. "As sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Is it going to be that much? I hope not, and I think the more we push on the mitigation, the less likelihood it will be that number." Trump, who has repeatedly compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu, said at the briefing: "A lot of people have said 'Ride it out. Don't do anything, just ride it out. And think of it as the flu.' But it's not the flu. It's vicious." Questioned about his change in tone, Trump said that the pandemic is "really easy to be negative about" but that he tries to maintain optimism and act as a "cheerleader for the country." "We are going through the worst thing that the country has probably ever seen," he added. "We lose more here potentially than you lose in world wars. So there's nothing positive, there's nothing great about it, but I want to give people in this country hope.""

But I am sure supporters will see his new direction and say, "see, Great Leader is doing the right thing #MAGA #KAG #bullshit"

What he said above and these video montages go together like PB&J:

https://twitter.com/ByJove2/status/1241866312520884224
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr6lnPVc4tg

An absolute POS, disgusting excuse for a human.

4/1/2020 2:03:54 AM

Quote :

" and OF COURSE Trump shares the blame because he took over and kept all of the pre-existing systems in place and yes, made many of them even stronger but in no way is he the head of the monster or the Dr. Frankenstein. He simply oversees AMERICAN systems that have been in place for ages."

This is, of course, bullshit.

You can absolutely say the health care system tying care to employment is making this situation worse. It is. Period. BUT, Trump and his administration actively took steps to make our response to this particular situation worse. His obvious lack of attention to detail and lack of reality directly contributed to and is still directly contributing to the situation as is. There is literally zero doubt that his slow waking this will cost more people’s lives than it should have. Talking about this is a necessity.

And for the record, I know Earl is a troll on TWW. I respond because he is a caricature of some of the actual “far left” that has a following. Not legitimate, serious people like Jeremy Scahill or anything but those people that actually have a following (the Max Blumenthal/Ben Norton types) who are insane and bad. His ideas aren’t just pulled out of thin air to troll.

[Edited on April 1, 2020 at 8:19 AM. Reason : I used quotes because most of the serious far left is good. Earl types are not.]

4/1/2020 8:18:37 AM

Quote :

"A lot of people have said 'Ride it out. Don't do anything, just ride it out."

A lot of people = Fox News

4/1/2020 8:58:55 AM

Ok so I want to hear the basis for the excuse of "The Chinese kept it secret, therefore we were not able to respond sooner."

This is utter BS. Sure they probably kept some details from the public - I mean we all were theorizing that many more were dying than what was being reported, but we knew it was out there. We knew the symptoms, and we knew it was coming. There's no getting around that. Maybe it popped up a few weeks before it hit the news cycle, like in mid December or something, but we knew. Knew and did nothing.

4/1/2020 12:04:28 PM

I think you pretty much nailed it. I'd also add that scientists have been warning us of a supervirus long before it hit. Every country that wasn't prepared has themselves to blame.

4/1/2020 12:09:22 PM