Trump Aides: Fraud Claims 'Crazy Stuff'

We've been writing about Donald Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud since the 2016 election. Yes, the election he won. 

Trump warned before the 2016 election about "illegal immigrants" and "dead people" voting, and complained after he took office that 3 to 5 million "illegal votes" cost him the popular vote. On Jan. 25, 2017, the newly installed president demanded a “major investigation into VOTER FRAUD.”  

But, even for us nonplussed fact-checkers, it was quite something listening to Trump's top aides talk about confronting the president after the 2020 election about his fraud claims, as they did in testimony before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. 

At the June 13 hearing, Trump's top Justice Department officials in taped testimony recalled telling the president that his election fraud claims were "bullshit" and "crazy stuff," to quote former Attorney General William Barr. 

Richard Donoghue, a deputy AG under Trump, said he went through a long list of bogus claims that the president had been repeating and explained why each was false.

"Told him flat out that much of the information he's getting is false and or just not supported by the evidence," Donoghue said.

Trump was told there was no "big vote dump" in Detroit, no "suitcase" stuffed with illegal ballots in Atlanta and no voting machines in Michigan rigged to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden. 

Still, as we write this week, the president continued to spread false and misleading information about voter fraud.

Read the full story, "Trump Ignored Aides, Repeated False Fraud Claims."

Reader: What purpose do the anchor points on our airway inner lining serve?  You know, the ones the covid virus docks to.

Seems we can't stop infection, but can stop/slow disease proliferation by vaccination. 

Given these airway anchor points are not visited by macrophages in the blood, we can never hope to be uninfectable. True or false?

FactCheck.org Science Editor Jessica McDonald: Thanks for the question. There are several things going on here.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, enters human cells by binding to a receptor called ACE2, or angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This receptor is present in the respiratory tract, but also on a bunch of other tissues in the body. The main function of ACE2 is to help regulate blood pressure as part of the renin-angiotensin system.

Vaccination (or immunity as a result of a previous infection) does not prevent infection by interfering with ACE2. Instead, the main thing that is happening is that antibodies -- made possible because of that previous exposure -- exist and are able to glom onto viruses before they can infect cells or replicate. This is typically referred to as sterilizing immunity.

Now, technically, it’s unclear if true sterilizing immunity is possible, as Katherine Wu of the Atlantic has explained. But there certainly are vaccines that limit viral entry and spread to the point that the virus is never detected and someone does not get sick.

You’re right at the moment, our current vaccines, which were designed to target earlier versions of the coronavirus, are not very good at preventing infection against the current variant, omicron. The main purpose of vaccination is to avoid severe illness and death from COVID-19 -- and our vaccines still do that quite well, particularly after a booster. 

Protection against infection is quite low. But as we’ve written, vaccines still probably help prevent infection against omicron a little bit, for a short period of time, when a person’s circulating neutralizing antibodies are high.

The question now is, how can we improve vaccine protection against infection with SARS-CoV-2? Scientists are working on this now, in a variety of ways. The first is to make a vaccine that better targets the omicron variant or whatever variant might be circulating in the future. A better matched vaccine would in theory trigger the body to make more antibodies that can neutralize the virus. This will likely improve initial protection against infection, although that protection would be expected to still only last a few months or so. 

The other approach scientists are taking is to try to make a mucosal vaccine, such as a nasal spray, that would initiate an immune response closer to where the virus enters the body and would produce more type A antibodies, which are present in mucosal tissues. That type of vaccine design could be more likely to ward off infection better than the standard intramuscular kind.

[Correction: Last week, we had a typo in our "Reply All" item and, embarrassingly, misspelled the name of our own reporter, Saranac Hale Spencer. Mea culpa!]  

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Examining Uvalde’s Police Spending": For the fiscal year ending in September, spending on police is expected to account for 37% of general fund expenditures in the city of Uvalde, Texas. But police spending is projected to make up about 17% of the city’s total operating expenditures, contrary to imprecise claims made by some politicians and news organizations. 
• "Posts Distort Questionable Study on COVID-19 Vaccination and EMS Calls": Studies have found that COVID-19 increases the risk for heart complications, and that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the risks for males and females in all age groups. Social media posts, however, have misinterpreted and publicized a criticized study that claims to have identified a correlation between emergency calls for cardiac events and the vaccination rate in Israel. 
• "Democratic Congressman Exaggerates Number of Gun 'Massacres'": In discussing a bipartisan Senate proposal to address gun violence, Rep. Jamie Raskin exaggerated when he said there have been "more massacres than days in 2022." Using the source supplied by the congressman's office, guns were used in 14 "mass murders" so far this year. 
• "Posts Baselessly Link Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome to COVID-19 Vaccines": Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, or SADS, has been studied for decades and is caused by genetic heart problems. But social media posts suggest, with no evidence, that SADS is related to COVID-19 vaccines.

• PREGÚNTELE A SCICHECK: "Las personas vacunadas no son más susceptibles al COVID-19 que las no vacunadas": ¿Las personas vacunadas y con la dosis de refuerzo son más susceptibles a infectarse o enfermarse con la variante ómicron que las personas no vacunadas?