A new message from your friends at People For the American Way.

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[ [link removed] ]45's Falsehoods and Failures: Weekly Coverage of Trump During COVID-19

PFAW Member,

If Donald Trump’s administration had done even an average job of leading
the country through the coronavirus pandemic, about 145,000 lives could
have been saved, [ [link removed] ]according to the New York Times. That’s 79 percent of
the United States’ actual death toll, which is currently at more than
186,000 lives lost to COVID-19. It’s sobering to consider those numbers in
light of Trump’s and his administration’s poor response to the pandemic.

Six months into the pandemic, Trump’s failures are so catastrophic that
they are impossible to ignore. Yet that’s exactly what [ [link removed] ]he and [ [link removed] ]his
Republican cronies tried to do last week at the Republican National
Convention (RNC). [ [link removed] ]Our special RNC edition of this blog series covered
Trump’s lies and calculated deceptions at the RNC; his behavior in the
days since has not improved.

* On August 31, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis
[ [link removed] ]released weeks of confidential White House reports about the spread
of the pandemic that were issued from late June through early August.
These reports [ [link removed] ]demonstrate that Trump and senior administration
officials knew about the severe outbreaks that spread throughout the
Midwest and the South even as they publicly dismissed concerns – and
continue to do so – about the threat of this public health crisis.
* Trump continues to ignore and attack health experts, and his latest
[ [link removed] ]target is the Food and Drug Administration. Since he first
[ [link removed] ]claimed that the “deep state” at the FDA is impeding progress for a
COVID-19 vaccine to damage his reelection prospects, he has continued
to undermine the agency’s integrity.

* Last Saturday, August 29, White House press secretary Kayleigh
McEnany [ [link removed] ]announced “a major breakthrough on the China Virus”
after Trump learned about a promising, but early, FDA finding –
the same finding that Trump called [ [link removed] ]“a historic breakthrough”
at the RNC.
* Perhaps in response to Trump’s pressure, FDA chief Stephen Hahn
[ [link removed] ]indicated his willingness to approve a vaccine before human
trials are complete, raising concerns that such a vaccine could
be ineffective or even harmful.
* In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
[ [link removed] ]began [ [link removed] ]telling state health officials to be ready to
distribute a vaccine as early as November 1 – heightening
concerns that Trump is pressuring the nation’s top scientists to
approve a vaccine before the election, even if it is not ready.

* Scientists at the National Institutes of Health, anonymous sources at
the FDA, and other outside experts have [ [link removed] ]pushed back against
Trump’s manipulative political tactics. Former Obama FDA chief
Margaret Hamburg [ [link removed] ]told Stat News that political interference at the
agency “has been an issue in past administrations Republican and
Democratic … But never at this level, and never accompanied with the
kind of public derision and undermining of both the employees who work
at the agency and, frankly, the very mission of the agency.”
* The Washington Post [ [link removed] ]reported on August 31 that the White House
coronavirus task force’s new advisor and Trump confidant, Scott Atlas,
has advocated a “herd immunity” strategy to deal with the public
health crisis. This strategy calls for letting the pandemic run
rampant throughout the country until a majority of the population
builds resistance to the virus, while only protecting a small segment
of vulnerable populations. [ [link removed] ]According to emergency physician and
CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen, the herd immunity approach is so
dangerous that it would likely result in at least two million
Americans dying in the process.
* On August 29, Trump [ [link removed] ]retweeted two QAnon supporters, both of whom
promoted the conspiracy theory that the CDC has exaggerated the
COVID-19 death toll on its website. On August 31, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst
later [ [link removed] ]repeated these false claims during a campaign event, saying
she was “skeptical” of the statistics. (Twitter later [ [link removed] ]removed one
of the tweets Trump retweeted for disseminating misinformation.)
* Federally funded relief packages of fresh produce will [ [link removed] ]include a
letter signed by Trump and printed on White House stationery that
touts the administration’s response to the coronavirus.
* Trump continues to lie about the current state of the economy as a
reelection strategy, incorrectly [ [link removed] ]conflating the stock market with
the “great American [economic] comeback” as an example of his
purported success. This claim, which was repeated frequently at the
RNC, ignores the real, and grim, state of the economy: More than 10
percent of workers are jobless and almost 30 million people are
receiving some form of unemployment assistance. Economists are now
[ [link removed] ]warning that another recession, equal to or worse than the Great
Recession, is looming, but Trump still refuses to work with Congress
to come to an agreement on the next stage of coronavirus relief.

Thinking back to the number of lives that could have been saved if Trump
had been able to do even a passable job of managing the pandemic, the
administration’s failure to establish any kind of coordinated plan to
address the public health crisis – other than to deny its effects – is
inexcusable.

Due to Trump’s fatal mismanagement, although the U.S. accounts for only
four percent of the world’s population, it [ [link removed] ]has 22 percent of worldwide
confirmed COVID-19 cases.

It’s no wonder a majority of Americans are [ [link removed] ]embarrassed by the
government’s response to the pandemic.

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The [ [link removed] ]Falsehoods and Failures series will appear every Friday on our
blog. [ [link removed] ]You can find the previous post here. For ongoing coverage of
Trump and the Right Wing's response to the coronavirus, check out PFAW's
[ [link removed] ]Right Wing Watch.

Thanks as always for your ongoing support – stay safe and healthy!

– Sarah, PFAW

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