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,

In yet another chaotic news week – this one brimming with headlines about
the last presidential debate, Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories, the
Senate’s illegitimate process to confirm anti-health care nominee Amy
Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and more – coronavirus caseloads and
hospitalizations have continued to skyrocket across the U.S. Still, Donald
Trump continued to spread lies and reject scientific expertise about the
pandemic.

Since February, Trump has insisted [ [link removed] ]at least 38 times that COVID-19
would disappear. But on October 16 the United States [ [link removed] ]recorded more than
70,000 cases in a single day for the first time since July, and then 6
days later set a [ [link removed] ]record at over 77,000 new cases in one day on October
22 – the same day that the U.S. recorded [ [link removed] ]more than 1,100 COVID-19
deaths in 24 hours. Against this background, the fact that Trump is
[ [link removed] ]averaging more than 50 false claims per day is truly staggering, and
his actions only further hurt and jeopardize the American people.

* Trump and Joe Biden, his Democratic rival for the presidency, faced
off in the final debate on October 22. Although less appalling than
his combative, manic performance at the first debate, Trump’s litany
of untruths stood in sharp contrast to the debate performance of any
[ [link removed] ]previous president. Trump’s lies [ [link removed] ]included many repeated
falsehoods about coronavirus, including that the pandemic is “going
away,” that shutting down the economy results in more people dying,
and that his actions prevented 2.2 million people from dying, among
many others.
* Despite local health and medical experts’ [ [link removed] ]calls for Trump to cancel
his campaign rallies, he has continued to hold in-person events around
the country.

* On October 19, Trump [ [link removed] ]criticized CNN for its pandemic coverage
at a campaign rally in Arizona. He told his supporters that CNN
is “trying to talk everybody out of voting” through its coverage
and called the network “dumb bastards.” (He [ [link removed] ]repeated those
attacks again in North Carolina on October 21.)
* At a rally in Nevada on October 18, Trump [ [link removed] ]mocked Biden for
saying he would “listen to the scientists” to control and end the
pandemic. He lied that “if I listened totally to the scientists,
we would right now have a country that would be in a massive
depression … we’re like a rocket ship.” His assertion runs
[ [link removed] ]contrary to the observations of most economists and the lived
[ [link removed] ]experiences of the 1.1 million Americans who applied for
unemployment benefits last week, including the many American
workers who have been [ [link removed] ]laid off twice during the pandemic.

* Trump’s smear campaign against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading
infectious disease expert, continued this week: On October 19, Trump
[ [link removed] ]said on a call with campaign staff that “Fauci is a disaster. If I
listened to him, we’d have 500,000 deaths.” The next day, he
[ [link removed] ]repeated his attacks against Fauci, claiming that “he’s been
wrong” on his widely accepted health and safety recommendations during
the pandemic. Despite his continued public insults, however, CNN
reported on October 21 that [ [link removed] ]Trump consulted Fauci during his
recovery from COVID-19.
* On October 22 – the same day Senate Republicans voted anti-health care
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett out of committee – the White
House leaked unedited video of Trump’s “60 Minutes” [ [link removed] ]interview with
Lesley Stahl. After Stahl questioned Trump about his campaign rallies
and the lack of COVID safety precautions, he claimed that he told his
supporters to wear masks and insulted her for having a “negative
attitude.” When Stahl asked Trump about the upcoming Supreme Court
decision to gut the Affordable Care Act during a pandemic, he
responded, “I hope that they end it.” Further pressing the issue,
Stahl [ [link removed] ]asked about people with preexisting conditions, and Trump
falsely promised that “they will be totally protected.”

Evidence continues to pile up about Trump’s abject failure to adequately
respond to the pandemic. A new [ [link removed] ]study from Columbia University
concluded that hundreds of thousands of Americans died because of the
federal government’s failed response. The study’s lead author called the
pandemic response a “monumental, lethal screwup by an administration that
didn’t want to deal with reality.” In addition, CNN fact-checkers
[ [link removed] ]concluded that Trump made more false or misleading claims from October
16 -18 than he did during [ [link removed] ]nearly any other timeframe during his
presidency.

Since [ [link removed] ]early April, PFAW has reported every week on our country’s
[ [link removed] ]rising COVID caseload, and the [ [link removed] ]dire circumstances too many
Americans are facing amid the pandemic. Today, more than 222,000 Americans
have died, and the pandemic’s [ [link removed] ]third surge is upon us. A Harvard
researcher released the sobering [ [link removed] ]estimation that the coronavirus has
claimed 2.5 million years of potential life in the U.S. alone, robbing our
families and communities of decades that could have been spent with those
now gone. Trump shows no interest in trying to empathize with the genuine
fear and pain that people across the country are experiencing during this
global catastrophe.

Furthermore, Trump and his Republican allies are focused on installing an
anti-health care justice on the Supreme Court and maintaining political
power by lying through campaign rallies to appeal to his base.

Our lives are on the line --- and our only recourse against the damage
Trump and his Republican cronies have inflicted upon our country and its
people is to vote them out of office.

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The [ [link removed] ]Falsehoods and Failures series will appear every week 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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