Category Archives: Donald Trump

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Donald Trump, Ireland, United States of America

IRISH TIMES: The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S.  Now, for the first time, we pity it

A view of the US from Ireland – Donald Trump has destroyed the country he promised to make great again

Irish Times, by Fintan O’Toole, April 25, 2020
Donald Trump: his presidency has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
Donald Trump: his presidency has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA 

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode?

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses.

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. . .

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

Fertile ground

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Donald Trump

Reporters track Trump in COVID-19 briefings: hours of attacks and boasts, 4 1/2 minutes of sympathy for victims

13 hours of Trump: The president fills briefings with attacks and boasts, but little empathy

The Washington Post, By Philip Bump and Ashley Parker, April 26, 2020
President Trump speaks Thursday during a coronavirus task force news conference at the White House.
President Trump speaks Thursday during a coronavirus task force news conference at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump strode to the lectern in the White House briefing room Thursday and, for just over an hour, attacked his rivals, dismissing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as a “sleepy guy in a basement of a house” and lambasting the media as “fake news” and “lamestream.”

He showered praise on himself and his team, repeatedly touting the “great job” they were doing as he spoke of the “tremendous progress” being made toward a vaccine and how “phenomenally” the nation was faring in terms of mortality.

What he did not do was offer any sympathy for the 2,081 Americans who were reported dead from the coronavirus on that day alone — among the now more than 54,000 Americans who have perished since the pandemic began.

What began as daily briefings meant to convey public health information have become de facto political rallies conducted from the West Wing of the White House — events that are now in doubt after an uproar last week over Trump’s suggestion of another bogus coronavirus cure. The president has offered little in the way of accurate medical information or empathy for coronavirus victims, instead focusing on attacking his enemies and lauding himself and his allies.

Trump has spoken for more than 28 hours in the 35 briefings held since March 16, eating up 60 percent of the time that officials spoke, according to a Washington Post analysis of annotated transcripts from Factba.se, a data analytics company.

The Post’s Ashley Parker discusses how President Trump struggles to be the “consoler in chief” and puts his ego “front and center” in the pandemic response. (Video: Monica Akhtar/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Over the past three weeks, the tally comes to more than 13 hours of Trump — including two hours spent on attacks and 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, but just 4½ minutes expressing condolences for coronavirus victims. He spent twice as much time promoting an unproven antimalarial drug that was the object of a Food and Drug Administration warning Friday. Trump also said something false or misleading in nearly a quarter of his prepared comments or answers to questions, the analysis shows.

Trump’s freewheeling approach ended in a political crisis this past week, after the president’s dangerous suggestion at a briefing Thursday that injecting bleach or other disinfectants might cure the coronavirus — “almost as a cleaning.” The remarks set off a government-wide scramble and led to Trump telling aides Friday he would skip briefings this weekend. White House officials say privately they are considering scaling back the events entirely.

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” Trump complained in a tweet Saturday. “They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”

In the 35 coronavirus task force briefings held since March 16, Trump has accounted for 60 percent of the time that officials spoke, according to a Washington Post analysis.In the 35 coronavirus task force briefings held since March 16, Trump has accounted for 60 percent of the time that officials spoke, according to a Washington Post analysis. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The briefings have come to replace Trump’s campaign rallies — now on pause during the global contagion — and fulfill the president’s needs and impulses in the way his arena-shaking campaign events once did: a chance for him to riff, free-associate, spar with the media and occupy center stage.

The Post analysis of Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings over the past three weeks — from Monday, April 6, to Friday, April 24 — reveals a president using the White House lectern to vent and rage; to dispense dubious and even dangerous medical advice; and to lavish praise upon himself and his government.

Trump has attacked someone in 113 out of 346 questions he has answered — or a third of his responses. He has offered false or misleading information in nearly 25 percent of his remarks. And he has played videos praising himself and his administration’s efforts three times, including one that was widely derided as campaign propaganda produced by White House aides at taxpayer expense.

The president repeatedly returns to the same topics, frequently treating questions as cues for familiar talking points.

He has, for instance, mentioned the nation’s testing capacity in 14 percent of his comments, talked about the country’s ventilator supply in 12 percent and waxed on about his imposition of travel bans — particularly from China — in 9 percent.

“These press conferences are 10 minutes of information, if you’re lucky, and an hour and a half of self-congratulations and misinformation,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, which supports Biden. “It is the distillation of a Trump rally. It is the personification of a Trump rally.”

Trump speaks alongside Vice President Pence at a task force briefing. White House officials say privately they are considering scaling back the events.Trump speaks alongside Vice President Pence at a task force briefing. White House officials say privately they are considering scaling back the events. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Vice President Pence, who heads the administration’s coronavirus task force, holds second place in speaking time at the briefings since mid-March — about 5½ hours, or roughly 12 percent of the total.

The medical professionals also received significantly less airtime than Trump. Deborah Birx, who oversees the administration’s virus response, spoke close to six hours, while Anthony S. Fauci, an infectious disease expert, spoke for just over two hours at 22 of the briefings.

Trump has also offered a response to a question posed to someone else more than a third of the time that occurred, including queries that the intended official had already answered.

Expressions of empathy from Trump are rare. The president has mentioned coronavirus victims in just eight briefings in three weeks, mostly in prepared remarks. In the first week of April, when the nation’s focus was largely on the hard-hit New York region, Trump began several briefings by expressing his condolences for the victims there.

“We continue to send our prayers to the people of New York and New Jersey and to our whole country,” Trump said on April 6, offering similar sentiments the following day: “We grieve alongside every family who has lost a precious loved one.”

On April 19 — as the death toll in the United States climbed past 40,000 and more than 22 million Americans were unemployed — a CNN reporter sparked Trump’s ire when he noted the grim milestones and asked, “Is this really the time for self-congratulations?”

“What I’m doing is, I’m standing up for the men and women that have done such an incredible job,” Trump responded. He added that he was “also sticking up for doctors and nurses and military doctors and nurses” before eventually angrily dismissing the question as “fake news.”

The Post’s Margaret Sullivan explained March 31 how President Trump’s coronavirus task force briefings can veer away from newsworthiness. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the briefings are a way for the president to keep the public informed. “Millions and millions of Americans tune in each day to hear directly from President Trump and appreciate his leadership, unprecedented coronavirus response, and confident outlook for America’s future,” McEnany said in a statement.

Like his campaign rallies, the president’s portion of the daily briefings are rife with misinformation. Over the past three weeks, 87 of his comments or answers — a full 47 minutes — included factually inaccurate comments.

Trump has mentioned the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible coronavirus cure in at least eight of his prepared remarks and responses, despite potentially dangerous side effects and no clear medical evidence that it helps treat the virus.

“Just recently, a friend of mine told me he got better because of the use of that — that drug. So, who knows?” said Trump in mid-April, adding, “And it’s having some very good results, I’ll tell you.”

After Trump’s comments on injecting disinfectants at the Thursday briefing, aides and other loyalists initially said the president’s remarks had been taken out of context. Then Trump claimed, despite his serious tone when making the suggestion, that he was just speaking “sarcastically” to get a rise out of reporters.

Trump speaks alongside Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, at a briefing last week. The president frequently answers questions addressed to other officials at the briefings.Trump speaks alongside Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, at a briefing last week. The president frequently answers questions addressed to other officials at the briefings. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Some administration officials, outside Republicans and other Trump allies say the briefings have increasingly become a distraction, and they fear they are doing more to harm than help the president’s reelection hopes. They worry that Trump is squandering the opportunity to demonstrate presidential leadership and be the “wartime president” he has claimed to be by picking petty fights and appearing childish and distracted.

But they also acknowledge they are unlikely to change Trump’s behavior. Over the past three weeks, the president has tweeted five times about the briefing’s “ratings,” which he frequently says are “through the roof.”

In recent days, aides have begun discussing adding an economic component to the virus response that would be separate from the daily briefing with public health officials, in part because they say one of the president’s strengths is the economy. He might appear with executives of small businesses beginning to reopen or with manufacturers of personal protective equipment, a senior administration official said.

Advisers are also considering cutting the number of briefings or having the president attend less frequently, as well as discussing getting the president out on the road in the next few weeks.

Some Republicans see value in Trump’s regular appearances in the briefing room. Much like the 2016 campaign, where he seemed to benefit from being ubiquitous if controversial, the coronavirus news conferences offer Trump an elevated platform, especially in the absence of regular campaign events, said Cliff Sims, a former White House aide.

“Everybody in the country is talking about one thing, and it happens to be the one thing that Donald Trump is the dominant player in, and he’s leading that conversation,” Sims said. “Even visually, you still have Trump on your TV screen, in front of the White House logo in the briefing room, flanked by his advisers. And then you have Joe Biden very small on your computer screen, having a Zoom conversation with Al Gore.”

The most frequent target of Trump’s attacks during the briefings was Democrats (48 times, over roughly 30 minutes), including former president Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.). His next-favorite subjects for criticism were the media (37 times, over roughly 25 minutes); the nation’s governors (34, over 22 minutes); and China (31 times, over nearly 21 minutes).

Much like his rallies — where Trump often harangues the media from the stage and encourages chants of “CNN sucks!” — he uses his briefings as an opportunity to spar with and berate the press.

Trump stands in front of a video presentation during the April 20 briefing.Trump stands in front of a video presentation during the April 20 briefing. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

On Thursday, when a Post reporter noted that people tuning into the briefings “want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do,” Trump turned his frustration on the reporter, whom he dismissed as “a total faker.”

“I’m the president, and you’re fake news,” Trump said.

Cecil, the Democratic super PAC head, said his reaction was initially mixed when Trump began dominating the briefings. “You always have to be concerned when one side monopolizes so much of the coverage,” he said.

But Cecil said he thinks the daily routine will “ultimately hurt” Trump, especially as voters assess the president’s performance against their own suffering. His super PAC has already produced ads using Trump’s words from the briefings against him and plans to continue doing so going forward.

“It’s much different to process these press conferences when the coverage before and after is the unprecedented number of people dying, the fact that we don’t have tests,” he said. “Long term, it is hurting the president because people can see with their own eyes and what they are feeling in their own communities what the consequences are.”

Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Donald Trump, Gun control, National Rifle Association

“Reopen” protests organized by gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups

Who’s Behind the “Reopen” Domain Surge?

KrebsOnSecurity.com, April 20, 2020
A “reopen California” protest over the weekend in Huntington Beach, Calif. Image: Reddit.

The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names. The largest number of them were created just hours after President Trump sent a series of all-caps tweets urging citizens to “liberate” themselves from new gun control measures and state leaders who’ve enacted strict social distancing restrictions in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s a closer look at who and what appear to be behind these domains.

A series of inciteful tweets sent by President Trump on April 17, the same day dozens of state-themed “reopen” domains were registered — mostly by conservative groups and gun rights advocates.

KrebsOnSecurity began this research after reading a fascinating Reddit thread over the weekend on several “reopen” sites that seemed to be engaged in astroturfing, which involves masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants.

The Reddit discussion focused on a handful of new domains — including reopenmn.com, reopenpa.com, and reopenva.com — that appeared to be tied to various gun rights groups in those states. Their registrations have roughly coincided with contemporaneous demonstrations in Minnesota, California and Tennessee where people showed up to protest quarantine restrictions over the past few days.

A “reopen California” protest over the weekend in Huntington Beach, Calif. Image: Reddit.

Suspecting that these were but a subset of a larger corpus of similar domains registered for every state in the union, KrebsOnSecurity ran a domain search report at DomainTools [an advertiser on this site], requesting any and all domains registered in the past month that begin with “reopen” and end in “.com.”

That lookup returned approximately 150 domains; in addition to those named after the individual 50 states, some of the domains refer to large American cities or counties, and others to more general concepts, such as “reopeningchurch.com” or “reopenamericanbusiness.com.”

Many of the domains are still dormant, leading to parked pages and registration records obscured behind privacy protection services. But a review of other details about these domains suggests a majority of them are tied to various gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, and conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups.

For example, reopenmn.com forwards to minnesotagunrights.org, but the site’s WHOIS registration records (obscured since the Reddit thread went viral) point to an individual living in Florida. That same Florida resident registered reopenpa.com, a site that forwards to the Pennsylvania Firearms Association, and urges the state’s residents to contact their governor about easing the COVID-19 restrictions.

Reopenpa.com is tied to a Facebook page called Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine, which sought to organize an “Operation Gridlock” protest at noon today in Pennsylvania among its 68,000 members.

Both the Minnesota and Pennsylvania gun advocacy sites include the same Google Analytics tracker in their source code: UA-60996284. A cursory Internet search on that code shows it also is present on reopentexasnow.com, reopenwi.com and reopeniowa.com.

More importantly, the same code shows up on a number of other anti-gun control sites registered by the Dorr Brothers, real-life brothers who have created nonprofits (in name only) across dozens of states that are so extreme in their stance they make the National Rifle Association look like a liberal group by comparison.

This 2019 article at cleveland.com quotes several 2nd Amendment advocates saying the Dorr brothers simply seek “to stir the pot and make as much animosity as they can, and then raise money off that animosity.” The site dorrbrotherscams.com also is instructive here.

A number of other sites — such as reopennc.com — seem to exist merely to sell t-shirts, decals and yard signs with such slogans as “Know Your Rights,” “Live Free or Die,” and “Facts not Fear.” WHOIS records show the same Florida resident who registered this North Carolina site also registered one for New York — reopenny.com — just a few minutes later.

Merchandise available from reopennc.com.

Some of the concept reopen domains — including reopenoureconomy.com (registered Apr. 15) and reopensociety.com (Apr. 16) — trace back to FreedomWorks, a conservative group that the Associated Press says has been holding weekly virtual town halls with members of Congress, “igniting an activist base of thousands of supporters across the nation to back up the effort.”

Reopenoc.com — which advocates for lifting social restrictions in Orange County, Calif. — links to a Facebook page for Orange County Republicans, and has been chronicling the street protests there. The messaging on Reopensc.com — urging visitors to digitally sign a reopen petition to the state governor — is identical to the message on the Facebook page of the Horry County, SC Conservative Republicans.

Reopenmississippi.com was registered on April 16 to In Pursuit of LLC, an Arlington, Va.-based conservative group with a number of former employees who currently work at the White House or in cabinet agencies. A 2016 story from USA Today says In Pursuit Of LLC is a for-profit communications agency launched by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch.

Many of the reopen sites that have redacted names and other information about their registrants nevertheless hold other clues, mainly based on precisely when they were registered. Each domain registration record includes a date and timestamp down to the second that the domain was registered. By grouping the timestamps for domains that have obfuscated registration details and comparing them to domains that do include ownership data, we can infer more information.

For example, more than 50 reopen domains were registered within an hour of each other on April 17 — between 3:25 p.m. ET and 4:43 ET. Most of these lack registration details, but a handful of them did (until the Reddit post went viral) include the registrant name Michael Murphy, the same name tied to the aforementioned Minnesota and Pennsylvania gun rights domains (reopenmn.com and reopenpa.com) that were registered within seconds of each other on April 8.

A large number of “reopen” domains were registered within the same one-hour period on April 17, and tie back to the same name used in the various reopen domains connected to gun rights groups. A link to the spreadsheet where this screen shot is drawn from is included below.

A Google spreadsheet documenting much of the domain information sourced in this story is available here.

No one responded to the email addresses and phone numbers tied to Mr. Murphy, who may or may not have been involved in this domain registration scheme. Those contact details suggest he runs a store in Florida that makes art out of reclaimed or discarded items, and that he operates a Web site design company in Florida.

Update, April 21, 6:40 a.m. ET: Mother Jones has published a compelling interview with Mr. Murphy, who says he registered thousands of dollars worth of “reopen” and “liberate” domains to keep them out of the hands of people trying to organize protests. KrebsOnSecurity has not be able to validate this report, but it’s a fascinating twist to this tale: How an ‘Old Hippie’ Got Accused of Astroturfing the Right-Wing Campaign to Reopen the Economy

Update, April 22, 1:52 p.m. ET: Mr. Murphy told Jacksonville.com he did not register reopenmn.com or reopenpa.com, contrary to data in the spreadsheet linked above. I looked up each of the records in that spreadsheet manually, but did have some help from another source in compiling and sorting the information. It is possible the registration data for those domains got transposed with reopenmd.com and reopenva.com, which included Mr. Murphy’s information prior to being redacted by the domain registrar.

Original story:

As much as President Trump likes to refer to stories critical of him and his administration as “fake news,” this type of astroturfing is not only dangerous to public health, but it’s reminiscent of the playbook used by Russia to sow discord, create phony protest events, and spread disinformation across America in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

This entire astroturfing campaign also brings to mind a “local news” network called Local Government Information Services (LGIS), an organization founded in 2018 which operates a huge network of hundreds of sites that purport to be local news sites in various states. However, most of the content is generated by automated computer algorithms that consume data from reports released by U.S. executive branch federal agencies.

The relatively scarce actual bylined content on these LGIS sites is authored by freelancers who are in most cases nowhere near the localities they cover. Other content not drawn from government reports often repurpose press releases from conservative Web sites, including gunrightswatch.com, taxfoundation.org, and The Heritage Foundation. For more on LGIS, check out the 2018 coverage from The Chicago Tribune and the Columbia Journalism Review.

2020 elections, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Donald Trump, Presidential politics

VIDEO: Republican Group Endorses Biden With Anti-Trump Ad In Battleground States

George Conway’s Lincoln Project hits Trump and praises Biden in a blistering new video.

Huffington Post, by Ed Mazza, April 21, 2020

A conservative group critical of President Donald Trump is going on the attack with a new ad endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden for November’s election.

[First, a Lincoln Project ad on the Huffington Post Youtube Channel: “Trump Gets Scorched in GOP Ad“]

The spot from The Lincoln Project, titled “Ready,” lauds Biden as “a bipartisan leader who puts good ideas ahead of party politics” and praises his strength and character.

“America knows Joe Biden,” the narrator states. “He is the man for this moment.”

“Donald Trump has left America in a state of danger, despair and economic depression, and the risks are too high to allow him another term,” Jennifer Horn, one of the co-founders of The Lincoln Project, said in a news release.

The group’s other leaders include conservative attorney George Conway, husband of counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, along with GOP strategists Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt and John Weaver.

The ad is airing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in Grand Rapids, Michigan, both key markets in swing states Trump won in 2016.