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The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

Instead of viewing this as the health crisis it is, the Trump administration viewed this as a political crisis. One in which Trump's re-election was more important than protecting the lives of American citizens. One which relied on denial, obfuscation and misdirection instead of leadership and action.

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From the attached article:

When the definitive history of the coronavirus pandemic is written, the date 20 January 2020 is certain to feature prominently. It was on that day that a 35-year-old man in Washington state, recently returned from visiting family in Wuhan in China, became the first person in the US to be diagnosed with the virus.

On the very same day, 5,000 miles away in Asia, the first confirmed case of Covid-19 was reported in South Korea. The confluence was striking, but there the similarities ended.

In the two months since that fateful day, the responses to coronavirus displayed by the US and South Korea have been polar opposites.

One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.

Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.

Some 357,896 tests later, the country has more or less won the coronavirus war. On Friday only 91 new cases were reported in a country of more than 50 million.

The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

The president was aware of the danger from the coronavirus – but a lack of leadership has created an emergency of epic proportions

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theguardian.com

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

The president was aware

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disaster?fbclid=IwAR0JBtLfN6j-WL5Zj6aNm0Xbj3OxAPK-pw8qceAA48unBBeR5M2C5x3mots

CDC issued a warning Jan 8.

Trump held campaign rallies Jan 9, Jan 14, Jan 28, Jan 30, Feb 10, Feb 19, Feb 20, Feb 21, Feb 28.

He golfed on Jan 18, Jan 19, Feb 1, Feb 15, Mar 7, Mar 8.

First time he admitted coronavirus might be a problem: Mar 13 

View article on FAIR's website Right-Wing Media Joined Trump in Enabling Health Disaster Karl Grossman   “If Hitler succeeds in pointing the way of peace and order and an ethical development which has been destroyed throughout the world by war, he will have accomplished a measure of good not only for his own people but for all humanity."—William Randolph Hearst (New York Times, 8/23/1934) The downplaying of the coronavirus by the right-wing press in the United States was preceded decades ago by the media owned by William Randolph Hearst enabling a different sort of toxicity by promoting a positive image of Nazism in the US. “From 1927 through the mid-’30s, Hearst solicited and ran regular columns from Benito Mussolini and then Adolph Hitler,” noted Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California/Santa Cruz in “The Devil and Mr. Hearst,” an article in a 2000 issue of The Nation (6/22/00).  As investigative reporter George Seldes wrote: “The millions who read the Hearst newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels in the nation’s movie houses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda.” Remembering this ability to embrace the unthinkable helps place in context the spectacle of right-wing US media—led by Fox News, Donald Trump’s main press cheerleader—to join the Trump administration in minimizing the dangers of a global pandemic. “There, for two crucial weeks in late February and early March, powerful Fox hosts talked about the ‘real’ story of the coronavirus: It was a Democratic- and media-led plot against President Donald J. Trump,” wrote Ben Smith, the media columnist of the New York Times (3/22/20): Hosts and guests, speaking to Fox’s predominantly elderly audience, repeatedly played down the threat of what would soon become a deadly pandemic…. Fox failed its viewers and the broader public in ways both revealing and potentially lethal. And it wasn’t that the Murdoch family, owners of Fox News, didn’t know early on the gravity of coronavirus. Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and chief executive officer of the Fox Corporation, by January had been “getting regular updates from the family’s political allies and journalists in his father’s native Australia.” And the family abruptly cancelled Fox Corporation co-chair Rupert Murdoch’s 89th birthday party at his California estate on March 8, “out of concern for the patriarch’s health,” reported Smith—while the network’s hosts continued to downplay the risk posed by the pandemic. Fox News' Jeanine Pirro (3/7/20; CNN, 3/12/20): "All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly, doesn't reflect reality. Without a vaccine, the flu would be far more deadly." Fox led the feverishly pro-Trump media cult, though it wasn’t alone. “As the coronavirus spreads around the globe, denial and disinformation about the risks are proliferating on media outlets popular with conservatives,” wrote Jeremy W. Peters and Michael M. Grynbaum in an article the Times (3/11/20) headlined “How Right-Wing Pundits Are Covering Coronavirus.” The subhead: “Following President Trump’s lead, many commentators have played down fears.” For example: Sean Hannity used his syndicated talk-radio program...to share a prediction he had found on Twitter about what is really happening with the coronavirus: It’s a “fraud” by the deep state to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent.... Fox Business anchor Trish Reagan told viewers…that the worry over coronavirus ‘is yet another attempt to impeach the president.’ Where doctors and scientists see a public health crisis, President Trump and his media allies have seen a political coup afoot. Wrote Caleb Ecarma in Vanity Fair (3/11/20): Fox News and Fox Business have long been the president’s safe spaces, where he is glorified nightly and his perceived enemies—whether Democrats, journalists, or so-called “deep state” actors—are pilloried. As with impeachment, sycophantic hosts provided daily defenses of the president’s actions, similarly dismissing the proceedings as a “hoax.” Now, as Trump has severely mismanaged the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and repeatedly mislead the public, the networks’ hosts appear willing to do their part to deflect blame away from the president and toward the same recurring targets of Trump’s ire. Rush Limbaugh (2/26/20; Washington Post, 2/28/20): “The Democrat Party, as it’s currently constituted, poses a much greater threat to this country than the coronavirus does.” And the downplaying was having an effect. CNN reported on March 18: Two polls released this week show the troubling effects that weeks of dismissive and conspiratorial coverage of the novel coronavirus from Fox News and other right-wing media outlets and personalities had on the American public.... Right-wing personalities—such as Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh—told their audiences that news coverage of the virus was hysterical and aimed at hurting Trump politically.... Polls from both Gallup and Pew Research revealed that Republicans…were much less likely to take the risks of the coronavirus as seriously as their Democratic counterparts. Conservative pundits encouraged their audiences to join Trump in his denial in the face of a health disaster. But “the aggressive and deadly coronavirus is unimpressed by the bluster of a con,” wrote David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker (3/22/20): For many weeks, the president resisted understanding the magnitude of the problems and the responsibilities of his office. In late January, he declared, “We have it totally under control.... It’s going to be just fine.”… A month later…“One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” Was he doing a good job? He gave himself a “ten.” Those who raised concerns about the administration’s cuts in emergency preparedness or the outrageous failure to supply testing kits were promulgating “a hoax.” This blithe unconcern for the looming crisis was hardly limited to Trump. His satraps in the “alternative fact” industry took their cues from him to rest easy in a warm bubble bath of denial. Rush Limbaugh, who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom at Trump’s latest State of the Union address, told his immense radio audience that the virus was “the common cold, folks.” There was a brief exception to the Trump media chorus. The editors of the conservative National Review published an editorial on March 9 citing the “failure of leadership at the top” of the US government which shows “no sign of being corrected” in regard to coronavirus. “Trump so far hasn’t passed muster.... He resisted making the response to the epidemic a priority for as long as he could...downplaying the problem, and wasting precious time.” But the National Review criticism didn’t last long. In recent weeks, the magazine has focused on blaming China. “Covid-19 Is the Chinese Government’s Curse Upon the World” (3/17/20) was the headline of a piece that declared: “The Chinese Communists, like all Communists, hide their societal problems.” The right-wing Hearst media empire’s sympathetic stance toward Nazism decades ago was a horrible happening in the history of the press in the United States. So have been the deception and lies—and blind obedience to Trump—of today’s right-wing media concerning the coronavirus calamity. Featured image: Sean Hannity downplaying the coronavirus (3/10/20; Media Matters, 3/10/20)   Read more © 2020 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved.  Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Our mailing address is: FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING 124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 New York, NY 10001 FAIR's Website FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today.

Supporters Rally Around Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

REEL WAMPS

WAMPALEAKS

GLADYS KRAVITZ

carverchick

Supporters Rally Around Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe


By Jessica Hill

Cape Cod Times

Mar 30, 2020

MASHPEE — Since the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe received the news Friday that its land would be taken out of trust, it has received an outpouring of support and calls to action.

Tribal officials are calling on the House of Representatives and the Senate to pass bill H.R. 312, also known as the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act.

Legislators and celebrities have released statements calling out the U.S. Department of the Interior’s order to disestablish the tribe’s reservation and remove its land-in-trust status.

State Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, and state Rep. David Vieira, R-Falmouth, said Monday they plan to circulate a letter to colleagues in the state Legislature and others in the public voicing their disappointment with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s order.

“The intent is to really convey our strong disappointment that the federal government would take this sort of action against any tribe, let alone doing so in the midst of a national emergency is cruel and pathetic,” Cyr said Monday. “It is very sad that as we mark 400 years since first contact, at least in Massachusetts with the Pilgrims, that the People of the First Light would be treated by the federal government in such a cruel and unacceptable way.”

Vieira said the move is a “slap in the face to the first Native American tribe who received the Pilgrims.”

“How more authentic could a tribe be in the United States than those that we have as part of our national story?” he said. “We’re very disappointed with the action.”

On Sunday, U.S. Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren released a joint statement calling the Trump administration’s actions a “cruel injustice.”

“The Mashpee Wampanoag have a right to their ancestral homeland no matter what craven political games the Trump administration tries to play,” the statement reads. “Disestablishment of the Mashpee Wampanoag reservation would reopen a shameful and painful chapter of American history of systematically ripping apart tribal lands and breaking the federal government’s word. We will not allow the Mashpee Wampanoag to lose their homeland. We will fight this cruel injustice that promises to have ripple effects across Indian Country.” 

On Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also released a statement in support of the tribe.

“I stand with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in their fight to restore lands that belong to them and oppose the disgraceful decision by the Trump Administration to disestablish their lands held in trust by the Department of Interior,” Sanders said in the statement.

Bands such as Portugal. The Man have also voiced support and urged people to sign the petition.

While the tribe has received an abundance of support, important questions still have not been answered, such as why the order was declared and what effects it will have.

Tribal attorney Benjamin Wish wrote in a statement Monday that no court has ever ordered the Department to take the Tribe’s land out of trust.

“The District Court did not so order,” Wish said in the statement. “The First Circuit did not so order. In fact, neither court ordered anyone to do anything.”

The tribe is continuing to provide health services and operate its food services for its citizens in need. It will also continue to provide educational language services through its Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, which operates a school dedicated to children’s immersion of the tribal language.

The tribe first received federal recognition in 2007, and the federal government then went into the process of taking the land into trust, Peters said. With the land in trust, the tribe was then able to operate as a sovereign entity, providing its members schooling, health services and housing, Peters said.

Those services and projects, such as the development of 42 units of affordable housing and the school that it operates, are now at risk.

“There, kids are able to have educational curriculum that is based on our culture and language, which is what most tribes strive for,” Peters said. “If those kids didn’t have that school, it would be devastating.”

While the tribe hopes to have its questions answered soon, members continue to rally in support.

On Sunday, tribal members held an hours long social distancing powwow, speaking through video chat about the tribe’s history and urging viewers to show support. 

Jessie “Little Doe” Baird, vice chairwoman of the tribal council, said in the powwow that when the Mayflower arrived 400 years ago, the settlers brought with them a very bad sickness that had spread through the ship, causing half of the people on the Mayflower to die.

“But our people didn’t turn them away,” she said. “Our people didn’t build a wall. Our people didn’t blame them. Our people reached out to the Pilgrims. We protected them. We fed them, and we showed them how to feed themselves and shared the resources here with them. We also entered into an agreement with them, an agreement of peace and mutual aid.”

“Mashpee is in a desperate situation right now,” Baird said. “We are fighting a virus, and we’ve had war declared on us by our own government.”

Reader Supported News FOCUS | Al Gore Blasts Trump: 'You Can't Gaslight a Virus'

 

31 March 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

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FOCUS | Al Gore Blasts Trump: 'You Can't Gaslight a Virus'

Marty Johnson, The Hill
Johnson writes: "Former Vice President Al Gore criticized President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Monday night, saying that he misled the public with his early comments on the virus."

EXCERPT:

"I’m afraid many [Americans] have been misled into thinking that some of his earlier statements about using the word hoax — and he used it in a specialized way — but saying it was going to disappear, those kinds of things. I feel badly for those who believe that stuff and have not been protecting themselves,” Gore told CNN's Don Lemon.

Continuing, Gore added: “Now, I think the president — to his credit — has been moving away from that. I think he’s learned that you can’t gaslight a virus. You’ve really got to pay attention to what the scientific facts are.”

Trump's tone regarding the coronavirus, which has infected more than 164,000 people in the U.S., has markedly changed since he declared the pandemic a national health emergency. 

Since then, the administration called on the country to social distance for 15 days — an order that was extended to the end of April on Monday — and Trump signed into law Congress's $2 trillion stimulus package in an attempt to invigorate the country's flailing economy.

Numerous states around the country have issued stay-at-home orders and have begun to prosecute individuals and businesses who blatantly ignore the measure.

 
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