Christian journal claims government has forced the Church to worship ‘the false god of saving lives’ 

CHRISTIANITY IS A DEATH CULT

March 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


Although a great many governors have made allowances for religious ceremonies to be performed in their coronavirus lockdown orders, many churches, too, have acknowledged in these extraordinary circumstances that their congregants should not be expected to attend public gatherings just for the sake of religious ceremony. Even Pope Francis has suggested Catholics who are at risk should ask God for forgiveness directly rather than go to Confession — a remarkable departure from centuries of Catholic Church doctrine.

But not all those of faith feel this way. In an angry article published in the right-wing Christian Journal First Things, editor R. R. Reno took a different position, suggesting that Christianity does not, in fact, command the faithful to take steps to save lives from COVID-19.

“At the press conference on Friday announcing the New York shutdown, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, ‘I want to be able to say to the people of New York — I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy,'” wrote Reno. “This statement reflects a disastrous sentimentalism. Everything for the sake of physical life? What about justice, beauty, and honor? There are many things more precious than life. And yet we have been whipped into such a frenzy in New York that most family members will forgo visiting sick parents. Clergy won’t visit the sick or console those who mourn. The Eucharist itself is now subordinated to the false god of ‘saving lives.'”

“A number of my friends disagree with me,” wrote Reno. “They support the current measures, insisting that Christians must defend life. But the pro-life cause concerns the battle against killing, not an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death.”

Indeed, Reno even suggested that fearing the pandemic is a victory for Satan.

“There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost,” wrote Reno. “Satan rules a kingdom in which the ultimate power of death is announced morning, noon, and night. But Satan cannot rule directly. God alone has the power of life and death, and thus Satan can only rule indirectly. He must rely on our fear of death.”

“Fear of death and causing death is pervasive — stoked by a materialistic view of survival at any price and unchecked by Christian leaders who in all likelihood secretly accept the materialist assumptions of our age,” concluded Reno. “As long as we allow fear to reign, it will cause nearly all believers to fail to do as Christ commands in Matthew 25. It already is.”

Trump already impatient with medical experts — and may discourage social distancing to save the economy: report

March 23, 2020 By Bradd Reed

President Donald Trump is already growing impatient with the advice of his administration’s medical experts and is preparing to tell Americans that they should all head back to work in a bid to rescue the economy.

Axios is reporting that “the administration is looking for ways to get people out in the world again to fire up the economy — perhaps much sooner than Dr. Fauci would like” within the next two weeks.

Given the massive damage that the virus is doing to the economy, the president is anxiously looking to put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror in a bid to save his presidency, administration sources tell Axios.



“Senior Trump officials, including the president himself, have only limited patience for keeping the economy shut down,” the publication reports. “At the end of the 15-day period, there will likely be a serious clash between the public health experts — who will almost certainly favor a longer period of nationwide social distancing and quarantining — versus the president and his economic and political aides, who are anxious to restart the economy.”

Nuclear industry effort to exploit coronavirus crisis for backdoor bailout decried as ‘disaster capitalism at its worst’

MITCH MCCONELL IN A SUPER PARTISAN WHINE ATTACKED THE LEFT WING DEMOCRATS FOR TRYING TO GET FUNDING FOR GREEN ENERGY.....

NUCLEAR POWER IS SUPPOSEDLY GREEN ENERGY MITCH DID NOT MENTION

HMMMM
March 23, 2020 By Common Dreams


“The nuclear industry begged for a bailout last fall and is now using coronavirus to try and brazenly grab more cash,” warned Friends of the Earth.

Friends of the Earth on Monday accused the nuclear power industry of exhibiting “disaster capitalism at its worst” after a lobbying group representing it reportedly asked the Trump administration for a 30% percent tax credit amid the coronavirus pandemic and pressed congressional lawmakers to include handouts in stimulus legislation making its way through the House and Senate.

According to E&E News, which focuses on the energy industry, the request came in a letter sent to congressional leaders and White House officials on Friday by Nuclear Energy Institute president and CEO Maria Korsnick.
In addition to other forms of aid—including sick leave for employees and “prioritized access” to testing and masks—the letter requested taxpayer-funded grants in the form of broad tax credits and waivers for existing regulatory fees.

“Our member companies are anticipating—or are already experiencing—severe financial strain as product orders are delayed or canceled, as industrial electricity demand falls, and as workforce availability becomes increasingly constrained,” Krosnick wrote to in a letter sent to lawmakers, Treasury Sectary Steven Mnuchin, and Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council.

In reaction, Friends of the Earth senior policy analyst Lukas Ross called the request a bald effort to exploit the current outbreak and economic downturn to obtain the same kind of financial bailout it has repeatedly sought from the U.S. government in recent years.


“Demanding a $23 billion gift from taxpayers during an unprecedented public health crisis sets a new low bar,” said Lukas Ross, senior policy analyst with Friends of the Earth. “The nuclear industry begged for a bailout last fall and is now using coronavirus to try and brazenly grab more cash.”






Nuclear is the latest industry to use this public health crisis as an opportunity to lobby for billions of dollars in gov’t handouts — an ask they had before the crisis even started.

This is disaster capitalism at its worst.https://t.co/3tpU3hdOyg

— Friends of the Earth (@foe_us) March 23, 2020





The industry proposal, added Ross, “would hurt ratepayers and the climate at a time when immediate need for people must be the first priority. The nuclear lobby should be ashamed. This is disaster capitalism at its worst.”

Trump accused of using global health crisis to ‘settle a score’ with people he dislikes

March 23, 2020By Matthew Chapman


On Monday, writing for the Washington Post, columnist Philip Bump noted that President Donald Trump has a mentality of apathy and sarcasm towards the misfortune of his political rivals — even when people are facing economic devastation or mortal danger.

“The president has a history of continuing to bash those who take key votes against him — like former Arizona senator John McCain — but one would be forgiven for assuming that Romney’s decision to follow government recommendations to isolate in order to avoiding spreading the dangerous virus would not be a jumping-off point for a presidential attack,” wrote Bump. “But this is Trump. So, after a beat, he asked a question. ‘Romney’s in isolation?’ Trump said, interrupting the reporter. Then, with apparent sarcasm, he continued: ‘Gee, that’s too bad. Go ahead.'”

“By now, we’ve learned how this works: Trump says something that accurately captures his feeling but couches it in enough murkiness to stymie efforts at categorizing it,” wrote Bump. “His base adores it and understands that he was saying what he meant, but objective observers are kept at bay with insistences that they are overreacting or misinterpreting what happened. I say he used “apparent sarcasm,” but no Trump supporter who shares Trump’s view of Romney was under any misapprehension about how the president actually feels about the Utah senator’s potential exposure to the virus.”

Bump noted that the president has also attacked the states of New York and Illinois, whose governors have been critical of him, for their own coronavirus situations. And nor is that where it began.

“Trump had been on the job for about seven months when Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico,” wrote Bump. “It had been a tense summer, with a white nationalist protest in Virginia at which a counterprotester was killed. Trump’s equivocations on the event met with broad condemnation. The three hurricanes that hit in rapid succession shortly afterward gave Trump a chance to reset, to adopt the trappings of the White House in visiting the areas damaged by the storms. It was a chance to use the presidency as a way offset a moment of difficult politics, and Trump seized it in embracing aid to the Gulf Coast after hurricanes Harvey and Irma.”

“When Maria his Puerto Rico, his attitude was noticeably different,” continued Bump. “His expressions of concern for the island were heavily dampened by vocal concern for how it had been managed and the money it owed to big banks. He fought off criticism that he wasn’t as focused on helping the island recover as he had been on aiding Texas and Florida — two states that helped him win the White House in 2016 — and picked fights with Puerto Rican political leaders.”

“On Feb. 13, there were about a dozen known coronavirus cases in the United States, but it was already spreading in the wild in the Pacific Northwest,” wrote Bump. “Frustrated with New York immigration laws, Trump had locked state residents out of a federal program meant to speed international travel. Cuomo was scheduled to visit the White House to discuss the freeze, but Trump offered some apparent preconditions on Twitter. One was that the state should stop investigating Trump and seeking his tax returns.”

“Oh, your trusted traveler program was canceled Andrew Cuomo? Gee, that’s too bad. Oh, your hospitals are strained, Illinois and New York? Gee, that’s a tough one. When it comes to his opponents and critics, empathy is in short supply,” concluded Bump. “Trump couldn’t help himself in offering that seeming sarcasm at Mitt Romney’s expense. But it was not the first time he’d expressed such a sentiment about someone with whom he disagreed politically — and not the first time that settling a score was mixed into his approach to addressing a crisis.”

You can read more here.

UPDATED
Olympic athletes in ‘impossible position’ – Canada

March 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


Canadian Olympic chiefs said Monday the health and safety of athletes had prompted the country’s decision to withdraw its team from the Tokyo Olympics amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A day after Canada became the first team to announce its withdrawal from the July 24-August 9 Games, Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) chief David Shoemaker said athletes had been left in an “impossible position.”

With public health authorities urging individuals to stay inside to curb the spread of COVID-19, athletes had been caught between a desire to heed health and safety advice while trying to minimize disruption to training programs.

“What we started to hear a fair bit was how this put tremendous pressure on our athletes who frankly were being torn by conflicting messages,” Shoemaker told AFP.

“On the one hand to do what they needed to do for their health and safety and that of their families and communities, and at the same time keep an eye on their training and the possibility that the Olympics could still occur in July.

“We felt that athletes were being placed in an impossible position and it wasn’t appropriate to ask athletes to put themselves at risk, to put their families at risk and their communities at risk, by still thinking that they had to get themselves ready for Tokyo.

“So in effect we told them to stand down … we thought it was time to stop focusing on gold medals and start focusing on the health of athletes and their families and of Canadians.”

The COC’s statement on Sunday specified a refusal to take part in a Games staged in the “summer of 2020” — in theory leaving the door open to participation at an Olympics scheduled later this year.

Shoemaker however said Monday that Canada’s preference was for a one-year postponement, expressing doubt that the Games could be rearranged in any other window in 2020.

“Our strongest recommendation is that the Games be rescheduled for the summer of 2021,” Shoemaker said. “We think it gives the greatest chance for the solutions to this terrible pandemic and also because it allows for the greatest possible amount of time to prepare for a postponed games.

“The seasonality would match up as opposed to trying to take the games into a month where it had not been anticipated. We’re sceptical of a games being rescheduled for later on in 2020.”

© 2020 AFP


Are the Olympics Finally Being Postponed?
International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound said the Games would likely be pushed to 2021.


BY DAN ADLER MARCH 23, 2020

The Olympic rings on the waterfront at Odaiba Marine Park

 in Tokyo, Japan.BY ISSEI KATO/REUTERS.

As sports leagues across the world have closed up shop due to coronavirus, the International Olympic Committee has stoutly maintained that the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo will still happen. On Sunday, amid growing clamor from athletes and national federations to postpone the Games, the IOC announced that it would reach a decision within four weeks. On Monday that timeline appeared to shrink significantly, as longtime IOC member Dick Pound told USA Today that “on the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” and that “the parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”

Pound said that the Games would likely be pushed to 2021, and that the four-week timeline announced by IOC president Thomas Bach was to figure out the details of the postponement.

Despite Pound’s seeming certainty, the postponement might not be completely confirmed. In response to Pound’s statement, IOC spokesperson Mark Adams told USA, “It is the right of every IOC member to interpret the decision of the IOC executive board which was announced yesterday.”

If the Olympics do go forward as scheduled, there will be a shortened list of participants. Team Canada has already said it will withdraw from the Games if they’re not postponed, as USA points out; Australia has said in a statement, “It’s clear the Games can’t be held in July”; and Brazil, Germany, and Norway have publicly asked for a delay.

Canada, Australia pull athletes out of Olympics, as the IOC says it will consider postponing Tokyo Games

Catherine Shu,

TechCrunch•March 22, 2020

ATHENS, GREECE - MARCH 12: Greek actress Xanthi Georgiou (R), dressed as an ancient Greek high priestess stands next to the Olympic flame during the Flame Handover Ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics on March 19, 2020 in Athens, Greece. The ceremony was held behind closed doors as a preventive measure against the Coronavirus outbreak. (Photo by Aris Messinis - Pool/Getty Images Europe)

The Canadian Olympic Committee announced that it will not send athletes to the Tokyo Olympic Games, as the International Olympic Committee weighs a decision on whether or not to postpone the event during the COVID-19 pandemic is currently. Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee told athletes to prepare for the Games being delayed by year.

The Canadian and Australian announcements were made after the International Olympic Committee said on Sunday that it will make a decision on whether or not to postpone the games within the next four weeks.

In a letter to athletes, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach wrote, "together with all the stakeholders, we have started detailed discussions today to complete our assessment of the rapid development of the worldwide health situation and its impact on the Olympic Games, including a scenario of postponement."

But the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees called on the IOC to postpone the games for one year.

"With COVID-19 and the associated risks, it is not safe for our athletes, and the health and safety of their families and broader Canadian community for athletes to continue training towards these games," they wrote. "In fact, it runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow."

In its statement, the Australian Olympics Committee said it "believes our athletes now need to prioritise their own health and of those around them, and to be able to return to their families, in discussion with their National Federations," especially as travel restrictions are implemented by countries around the world.

The Summer Olympics, which take place every four years, have become an opportunity to gauge the adoption and impact of streaming technology. In 2016, the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil set new viewership records for a live-streamed event.

According to a report by Akamai Technologies (whose streaming technology was used by NBC), the 2016 Games were streamed for a total of 3.3 billion minutes, including 2.71 billion live-streaming minutes, with 100 million unique users watching the Games on a NBC Digital platform.

In addition to being a major sporting event, the Olympics are also a proving ground for new technologies, with robotics being a highlight of the 2020 Games. The Tokyo Olympics was supposed to give companies, including Toyota and Panasonic, a chance to show off new assistive and delivery robots, and demonstrate how they can fit into major events as well as daily routines.


IOC looking at postponing Tokyo Olympics;

 Canada pulls out

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) The IOC will take up to four weeks to consider postponing the Tokyo Olympics amid mounting criticism of its handling of the coronavirus crisis that now includes Canada saying it won't send a team to the games this year and the leader of track and field, the biggest sport at the games, also calling for a delay.

© Getty A general view of the Olympic Rings near Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, after Global Athlete added its voice to those calling for the Tokyo Olympics to be postponed this summer due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The IOC is planning meetings with Japanese public authorities, global sports officials, broadcasters and sponsors that will deal with scenario planning for the Olympics, which are scheduled to start July 24. Canceling the games is not under consideration.


IOC President Thomas Bach sent a letter to athletes explaining the decision and why it might take so long, while also acknowledging the extended timeline might not be popular.

''I know that this unprecedented situation leaves many of your questions open,'' he wrote. ''I also know that this rational approach may not be in line with the emotions many of you have to go through.''

But only hours after the announcement, World Athletics President Seb Coe sent a letter to Bach saying that holding the Olympics in July ''is neither feasible nor desirable.'' He outlined a number of reasons, including competitive fairness, the likelihood athletes would overtrain if given a compressed schedule and the uncertainty caused by orders in many countries barring people from gyms and other workout venues.

''No one wants to see the Olympic Games postponed but ... we cannot hold the event at all costs, certainly not at the cost of athlete safety,'' he wrote. ''A decision on the Olympic Games may become very obvious very quickly.''

Then, late Sunday, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced it won't send athletes to Tokyo unless the games are postponed by a year, becoming the first country to threaten such a move. The committee said in a statement that it was unsafe for athletes to continue training.

''In fact, it runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow,'' the committee said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also urged the IOC to make a quick decision, adding that a postponement would be unavoidable if the games cannot be held in a complete way. The Australian Olympic Committee also chimed in, advising athletes to prepare for an Olympics next year.

''It's clear the games can't be held in July,'' said Ian Chesterman, Australia's team leader for Tokyo.

Despite the pressure on the IOC, a decision probably won't come sooner than next month.

The IOC said the scenarios under consideration ''relate to modifying existing operational plans for the Games to go ahead on July 24, 2020, and also for changes to the start date of the Games.''

The change in strategy followed Bach's conference call with executive board members.

Bach has consistently said organizers are fully committed to opening the games on July 24 - despite athlete training, qualifying events and games preparations being disrupted more and more by the virus outbreak causing the COVID-19 disease.

© APWF A woman walks past a large display promoting the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Friday, March 13, 2020. U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion to postpone the Tokyo Olympics for a year because of the spreading coronavirus was immediately shot down by Japan's Olympic minister. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. For some it can cause more severe illness. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Criticism of the stance grew in recent days from Olympic gold medalists and by an IOC member last Tuesday, before Bach finally acknowledged an alternative plan was possible.

National Olympic committees in Brazil and Slovenia later called for a postponement to 2021. Norway's Olympic body said it did not want athletes going to Tokyo until the global health crisis is under control.

The United States governing bodies of swimming and track - two of the three top-tier Summer Games sports - have called on their national Olympic officials to push for a postponement.

''There is a dramatic increase in cases and new outbreaks of COVID-19 in different countries on different continents,'' the IOC said. ''This led the (board) to the conclusion that the IOC needs to take the next step in its scenario-planning.''

The IOC said last week that roughly 4,700 of 11,000 spots in the Olympics have yet to be allocated.

Bach acknowledged the problems that come with a compressed or radically altered qualifying schedule, but also laid out several reasons that the IOC could not rush to a decision.

It included the availability of venues that are scheduled for use this summer but might not be available at a later time and the disruption of future events in the individual sports.

''A decision about a postponement today could not determine a new date for the Olympic Games because of the uncertain developments in both directions: an improvement, as we are seeing in a number of countries thanks to the severe measures being taken, or a deteriorating situation in other countries,'' Bach said.

Trump Won’t Order Vital Coronavirus Supplies Because Corporate CEOs Asked Him Not To
They’re worried it could be bad for business.

BY BESS LEVIN MARCH 23, 2020

BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES.

One of the most mind-boggling aspects of the coronavirus crisis in America is the fact that one of the wealthiest countries in the world doesn’t have the basic medical supplies necessary to deal with the situation. In addition to a lack of beds, hospitals across the nation have nowhere near the number of ventilators and masks doctors require to both do their jobs and protect themselves. While governors have pleaded with Donald Trump to help them obtain such equipment, he’s literally told them they’re on their own, seemingly forgetting the fact that he’s the one with the power here. For instance, Andrew Cuomo can’t invoke the Defense Production Act, which allows the federal government to take some control of the private sector to ensure production of materials relevant to national defense, but Trump can. And yet he’s chosen not to. Why? Because corporate CEOs don’t like the idea, and the president is more concerned with keeping big business happy than keeping Americans alive.

Yes, according to the New York Times, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and heads of major corporations have “lobbied the administration against using the act,” arguing that it could impose “red tape” on companies at a time when they need the government out of their hair. Unsurprisingly, free market die-hard Larry Kudlow, i.e., Trump’s never-right National Economic Council director, was “persuaded” by such arguments, as was Trump’s not-very-bright son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Instead the Trump Brain Trust has insisted that it can just convince businesses to help bridge the shortfall of vital medical supplies without making a formal demand, an initiative that thus far has had predictable results:

The government has essentially thrown out its existing playbook for dealing with pandemics, seizing the issue from the Department of Health and Human Services and moving it to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But it is far from clear that the effort to enlist companies like General Motors, Apple, and Hanes, just a few of the firms that have promised to free up existing supplies of masks or repurpose 3D printers to produce ventilator parts, constitutes an effective strategy.

In interviews with participants in the process, from business executives to government officials, there is still widespread confusion about how much and what exactly each firm is supposed to produce. Corporate executives say they face a bewildering number of requests from dozens of nations around the world, along with governors and mayors around the country, for scarce supplies. The White House has not said who will set the priority list for deliveries. And it is not clear that any of it will arrive in time for the cities and the states that are hit the hardest, including New York.

Administration officials, asked why they have been reluctant to use the full force of the Defense Production Act to press industry into action, say the country is not in such dire straits. There is plenty of volunteer cooperation, they say, and there is always the implicit threat of ordering mandatory measures if they do not. Mr. Trump, at the news briefing, suggested an ideological concern as well. “We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business,” he said.

During that briefing on Sunday, White House economic adviser Peter Navarro told reporters, “We’re getting what we need without putting the heavy hand of government down.” Navarro, you may recall, is the West Wing’s resident China crackpot whom Kushner hired after finding him on Amazon, and who attempts to sway government policy by issuing memos under a pen name. That’s the kind of expertise that’s led to, among other things, the production of basically worthless underwear masks:

Anderson Warlick, the chief executive of the textile company Parkdale Mills, said Mr. Navarro had called him early last week to ask what the company could make. By Saturday, Parkdale Mills joined Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, and other companies in announcing a coalition to produce masks. But they are not the kind hospitals most need. The new masks will be made of a three-ply underwear fabric, and do not provide the level of protection given by the N95 masks that health care workers need for intubation and other procedures.

While the corporate announcements, like Apple’s move to donate millions of masks, may have generated some positive headlines for the Trump administration, critics say the ad hoc approach is falling far short of the challenge. Industry executives say companies are reluctant to crank up production lines without purchasing guarantees from the government. With the economy in free-fall and factories shuttering around the country, few manufacturers are eager to invest in new machinery or venture into new products.

On Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, issued a public plea for Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act, saying, “We cannot wait until people start really dying in large numbers to start production, especially of more complicated equipment like ventilators and hospital beds.”
https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1242107062697504772

Of course it’s in no way surprising that Trump would prioritize the needs and desires of big business over matters of life and death, which would explain why he’s already ready to let people get out in the world and spread the virus further in an effort to shore up the economy:

“The Coronavirus Crisis Was Built for Insurgent Information”: Why Some Early MAGA Adopters Went Against Trump’s Virus Doctrine

As Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and much of the GOP parroted the president’s no-worries line, MAGA originals like Steve Bannon and Mike Cernovich sounded the alarm.

BY T.A. FRANK MARCH 23, 2020

BY ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES.

When my coronavirus monitoring first kicked into high gear, it happened to be thanks to an alarmed thread of tweets from pro-Trump blogger Mike Cernovich in late January. Because I’d spent several frightening weeks in China and Hong Kong during the SARS outbreak in 2003, I needed no further encouragement to obsess over something reminiscent of it. In the weeks that followed, I began to look for the pronouncements of others who were most out in front of the pack in expressing concern. These included angel investor Balaji S. Srinivasan, geneticist Razib Khan, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, Trump White House veteran Steve Bannon, Ars Technica cofounder Jon Stokes, Quillette editor Claire Lehmann, entrepreneur Jeff Giesea, author Matt Stoller, and Fox host Tucker Carlson. All of them, I noticed, stood at least a little outside of the mainstream. And a fair number of them were associated with the grassroots energy of Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016.

Here’s what was curious about this final point. Donald Trump, as we all know, spent several weeks downplaying the coronavirus problem and two crucial weeks, starting on February 26, when he suggested the number of cases was soon “going to be down to close to zero,” in outright denial. A whole host of Trump supporters joined the president in pooh-poohing the problem. “Healthy people, generally, 99% recover very fast, even if they contract it,” offered Fox’s Sean Hannity on March 10. Lots of man in the street Trump supporters were just as dismissive. But people like Bannon and Cernovich were not at all on board with Trump’s sinking ship of a message, and in some ways they’re more Trumpist than Trump. What, then, was the difference between Trumpists who followed the president into denial and Trumpists who, 180 degrees to the contrary, were in a vanguard of alarm?

It took me some thought and conversations about this question before I came up with an answer that turned out to be simple: It was Trump’s early adopters, the ones who supported him before he looked like a winner to the rest of the world, who were ahead of the average in expressing alarm over the coronavirus. It was Trump’s late adopters, the ones who would have lined up behind any Republican in power, who carried water for the message of denial. Early Trump adopter Tucker Carlson (who has compared supporting Donald Trump to rooting for “the old Chicago Cubs,” because of the embarrassment that goes with it) began making coronavirus coverage a staple of his show in late January, something that made him unique in cable news. Late Trump adopters like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh first ignored the problem and then amplified Trump’s losing message. As late as March 11, Limbaugh was insisting that “this virus is the common cold.”

For Trump’s early adopters, the issue of the coronavirus was a perfect fit. “If you were an early Trump adopter, then this China coronavirus is a vindication of everything you’ve said,” says Cernovich. “Like, hey, supply chains are a problem. Let’s bring back massive manufacturing. Everything we’ve been screaming about, warning about, for five years is right there.” If your preoccupations have been over manufacturing capacity, border control, or globalism, then coronavirus hits on all three at once. “I think the people who understood the Party of Davos cynicism, and about Chinese factories and all that, were early to understand that this was going to be a massive issue,” says Bannon, who began devoting his podcast, War Room, to the coronavirus already in late January.

And though there was lots of newspaper coverage of the coronavirus as it crippled China and spread to the rest of the world, the early Trump adopters tended to be in the crowd of people who were ahead of the conventional wisdom in their sense of the threat level. “In many ways the coronavirus crisis was built for insurgent information and sense-making networks, regardless of which side of the spectrum you were on,” says Jeff Giesea, a 2016 Trump supporter who began tweeting about coronavirus in early February. “There’s a lot more noise and a lot more signal” in those alternative networks, says Giesea, “but many of the people who went through the 2016 cycle have developed antennae for filtering signal from noise.”

Now, to be sure, you didn’t have to be an early adopter of Donald Trump—or a supporter at all—to be ahead of the curve in your alarm over the coronavirus. Plenty of people who worry about China or pandemics or public health or global economics, of which there are people of all sorts of professions and political persuasions, monitored the coronavirus with as much concern as, say, Tucker Carlson. Two of the writers I found most useful and prescient over the past several weeks were Matt Stoller and Jon Stokes, who are not Trumpists but populists on the left. Both have thought a lot about our systems of production. Stoller’s recently published book, Goliath, warns that “our industrial supply chains are fragile, concentrated and full of dangerous and hidden risks.” And both stood out for the prescience of their predictions, some of which were mocked as far-fetched when they were made. (In early February, Stokes was already warning at The Prepared, where he is deputy editor, of the possibility of “severe disruption” that might involve school closings, remote work, voluntary lockdowns, and internet slowdowns because of simultaneous streaming.) But populism and concern over outsourced production meant that an especially high share of early Trumpists were going to be early coronavirus criers.

If it makes sense why Trumpists would find such a resonant issue in the coronavirus, then the real mystery is why Donald Trump, for whom the issue was built, wound up playing the role of leading denialist, costing what will become many lives. “I was surprised China lobbed Trump a softball and he didn’t hit a home run,” says Cernovich. “And I was also furious.” Giesea calls Trump “an unfit character for this situation” (although he says that Trump has been improving). And Bannon, albeit more reserved in his criticism, speculates that the White House blanched at the prospect of a market crash.

But the simplest answer may be that Trump, if he was ever Trumpist to begin with, became something else once he came to Washington. It was Trump’s late adopters who came to prevail in most of the power struggles in the White House. Cutting taxes, worrying about Iran more than China, easing up on the border hawkishness, and siding more with business than workers—these are some of the preferences of the later adopters. By contrast the early Trump adopters are mostly on the outside today. Whether you think that’s a good or bad thing overall will depend on your ideology—whether you find the outlook of the early supporters or the late supporters easier to take. What’s clear is that on the issue of this pandemic, though, we’d all have been better off if Trump had listened to the former.

Have Trump’s Coronavirus Conspiracies Doomed His Supporters?
The president and his Fox allies played down the public health threat to an audience largely made up of older Americans, the group most susceptible to the worst effects of COVID-19.


BY CALEB ECARMA MARCH 20, 2020

President Donald Trump at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, 

on Monday, March 2, 2020.BY AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG

For weeks prior to the White House designating the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, Donald Trump downplayed the severity of the pandemic, assuring his supporters it was “totally under control.” Just last month he insisted, without evidence, that warmer weather makes the virus “miraculously” disappear and wrote off media coverage as a “hoax” created to hurt his brand. With coronavirus now claiming 219 American lives, over 17,000 cases, and one collapsed economy, Trump is finally starting to treat coronavirus with the gravity it deserves. But for a huge segment of his supporters, the damage is already done.

The Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index, a national survey on the public’s reception of the pandemic, found that a majority of respondents who identified as Republicans or heartland residents are more inclined to treat the disease as a less serious matter than their Democratic and coastal counterparts. This is notable not only because it likely shows the lasting effects of Trump’s disinformation campaign, but also due to the age of Trump supporters, who, per 2016 exit polls, tend to belong to an older demographic more susceptible to the worst effects of COVID-19. Compared to the urban-dominant Democratic voting base, Trump supporters are more likely to live in rural or suburban areas, where COVID-19 patients could be more at risk. Citing the most recent Census Bureau data in an Axios report on Friday, William Frey of the Brookings Institution found a correlation between counties with the largest share of Americans in the latter half of their 60s, and the most heavily pro-Trump voting blocs.

Data shows that Trump voters are more inclined to trust the news sources the president himself favors. A Pew Research Center study found that the only news outlet a majority of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents trust is Fox News. Hosts like Sean Hannity initially played into the president’s “hoax” coronavirus claims, pushing a conspiracy theory about “deep state” actors and accusing the media of “scaring the living hell out of people” for no good reason. Trump’s supporters agree: 76% of GOP respondents in a new Pew survey believe the press overhyped the impact of the disease, while just one-third of Republicans polled view coronavirus as a serious health risk. They also followed through with Trump and Hannity’s early advice on coronavirus. Just 53% of Republican participants in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey said they were attempting to take precautionary measures to curb the outbreak, a number dwarfed by the 80% of Democrats who are heeding the advice of medical experts to either self-quarantine, practice social distancing, or avoid large crowds.

The case of the Frilots, a Republican family from a conservative Louisiana community, illustrates how the pandemic can be dismissed until it hits close to home. Heaven Frilot, a 43-year-old oil-and-gas analyst told the New York Times how she revealed on Facebook that her husband Mark tested positive as many in her social circle were scoffing at the deadly virus, making jokes with “eye-roll emojis, Fox News talking points, [and] Rush Limbaugh quotes.“ But as word of Frilot’s diagnosis proliferated locally, according to the Times, “it was a revelation for the conservative suburbs of New Orleans, where many had written off the pandemic as liberal fear-mongering.”

To gauge how many Americans could die from the pandemic, Nicholas Reich, an infectious disease expert on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told the Washington Post he is studying regional death rates from the yearly flu, an indicator of which parts of the country could be hardest hit. (Reich added a disclaimer that this measurement is “probably not” perfect but is “a good place to start.”) Rural areas in states such as Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska, as well as small cities in New England, have all faced deadlier impacts from the flu than metro areas, according to the Post’s analysis of Centers for Disease Control data. In the most extreme cases, the death rate from flu in rural areas is up to 60% higher than in urban areas.

WATCH
12 Times President Trump Shook Hands During the COVID-19 Outbreak

On its face, it might seem like the pandemic will have the worst impact in high-population areas, given that experts have placed such an emphasis on avoiding crowds—advice that is nearly impossible to follow in urban New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. But rural areas generally lack the same access to health care. When it comes to coronavirus, fewer hospitals means less access to necessary medical equipment like ventilators. As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to skyrocket, Seattle is turning soccer fields into emergency hospitals to handle the extra patients and New York is considering doing the same with hotels and other temporary housing facilities. The infrastructure of these cities allows for sick residents to be quickly moved to a centralized location—a process that could not happen at the same speed in decentralized rural areas.

Income and class are also factors. Some of the most sparsely populated states are also the poorest, which presents an additional challenge when coupled with health care access: rural Americans in the South and Midwest are forced to spend relatively more on travel to get the same level of medical care as those in cities. More Americans are seeking coronavirus tests every day, and a diagnosis can be expensive. Time magazine interviewed a Massachusetts resident who was billed nearly $35,000 after testing positive for COVID-19; she is uninsured. In 2018, the Census Bureau estimated that 27.5 million Americans lacked health insurance, a number that has [gone up])https://khn.org/news/number-of-americans-without-insurance-rises-in-2018/) while Trump has been in office. Of the six states with the largest percentages of uninsured residents as of 2018—Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alaska—Trump won all of them in 2016.

CORONAVIRUS
“He Can’t Make Any Big Decisions”: As the Crisis Escalates, Trump Experiments With a Pivot
With his “wartime president” posture failing to stop the slide and his presidency in the balance, Trump toys with reopening the economy early.



BY GABRIEL SHERMANMARCH 23, 2020

BY JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES.

As the death toll from the coronavirus accelerates across the country—by Monday there have been more than 400 domestic fatalities—Donald Trump is grasping for a strategy before the crisis destroys his presidency. He has tried playing Roosevelt by claiming the mantle of “wartime president” while also playing to his nativist base by labeling COVID-19 “the China virus.” Now, Trump appears ready to disregard the advice of his medical advisers like Dr. Anthony Fauci by reopening the economy far sooner than Fauci has said is safe.

According to sources, Trump is increasingly frustrated with Fauci and governors who advocated for shutting down large swathes of the economy to stop COVID-19’s out-of-control spread. According to four Republicans briefed on internal West Wing conversations, Trump is fuming privately that Fauci advised him that the only way to blunt the pandemic was to bring the economy to a halt. “Trump is furious,” a former West Wing official said. “He’s been calling business leaders asking if he should just reopen the economy,” a Republican briefed on the conversations told me. “He’s hearing that you have to get the economy going,” another former West Wing official said.

So far, Trump has refrained from publicly lashing out at Fauci and New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose lucid and empathetic press conferences are in contrast to Trump’s shambolic media theater. But late Sunday night, as Dallas became the latest city to compel its citizens to stay home, Trump tweeted: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

The pivot away from the strict social-distancing strategy is gaining traction in the business community. On Sunday, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein—who endorsed Hillary Clinton—tweeted: “[C]rushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond. Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.” Tom Bossert, Trump's former Homeland Security adviser, told me the pivot is reflective of Americans' skepticism of government. "This has to do with peoples' relationship to government authority prior to this event."


Sources say that Trump is leaning toward telling at least some Americans to return to work after the 15-day social-distancing period ends on March 31. This puts Trump on a potential collision course with Fauci that many fear will end with Fauci being fired or quitting. “Fauci is the best medical expert we have. We can’t lose him,” a former White House official said. Signs of tension between Trump and Fauci have been emerging. Over the weekend, Fauci gave a series of candid interviews. “I’ve been telling the president things he doesn’t want to hear,” Fauci told Maureen Dowd. “I have publicly had to say something different with what he states. It’s a risky business.” Fauci told Science magazine: “When you’re dealing with the White House, sometimes you have to say things one, two, three, four times, and then it happens. So, I’m going to keep pushing.”

Trump’s view that he can ignore Fauci’s opinion may be influenced by advice he’s getting from Jared Kushner, whose outside-the-box efforts have often rankled those in charge of managing the crisis. According to two sources, Kushner has told Trump about experimental treatments he’s heard about from executives in Silicon Valley. “Jared is bringing conspiracy theories to Trump about potential treatments,” a Republican briefed on the conversations told me. Another former West Wing official told me: “Trump is like an 11-year-old boy waiting for the fairy godmother to bring him a magic pill.” (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Throughout the crisis, Kushner has counseled Trump that the crisis isn’t as bad as the media is portraying. Two sources said Vice President Mike Pence has complained to Trump about Kushner’s meddling in the work of the coronavirus task force. (Another former West Wing official disputed this, saying Pence wouldn’t openly challenge the Trump family. “Pence is politically smart,” the former official said.)

According to sources, Trump has been jealous that Cuomo’s press briefings have gotten such positive reviews. “He’s said Cuomo looks good,” a Republican briefed on internal conversations said. Trump’s solution has been to put on his own show. “Trump wants to play press secretary,” a former West Wing official said. The live briefings have essentially replaced his rallies and given him a platform to air grievances and attack the media. On Friday, he lit into NBC News reporter Peter Alexander when Alexander asked what Trump would say to Americans who are scared about the crisis. The confrontation energized Trump, according to a Republican who spoke to him afterward. “He was in the Oval Office feeling positive,” the source said. On Sunday, Trump was cavalier with a reporter who said Mitt Romney had gone into self-quarantine after spending time with Senator Rand Paul, who’d tested positive. “Romney’s in isolation? Gee, that’s too bad,” Trump said.

As Trump sends mixed messages, the stock market slide has only deepened. On Friday, he said he had invoked the Defense Production Act, but under pressure from his base not to nationalize the economy, he said Sunday that he wouldn’t compel companies to produce critical medical equipment. He’s now experimenting with a new approach to the crisis, but it’s unclear what legal authority he would have to supersede local shelter-in-place restrictions. Behind the bluster, he’s hamstrung. “He can’t make any big decisions,” a former West Wing official said. “He knows once you do, you can’t go back.”

This post has been updated.

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‘Charlatan’ Larry Kudlow immediately mocked for claiming Trump ‘is right’ to say ‘cure can’t be worse than the disease’
FORMER TALKING HEAD ON CNBC PRETENDS TO BE AN ECONOMIST 

NOW HE PRETENDS TO BE A DOCTOR, NOPE JUST PLAYS ONE ON TV

March 23, 2020 By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement


President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor Larry Kudlow was sidelined recently after lying on his former network, CNBC, falsely claiming the coronavirus was “contained” – and almost “airtight” – in a blatant attempt to protect the administration. He was wrong.

Kudlow is back on TV, this time on Fox News, to once again protect and applaud President Donald Trump.

In a stroke of midnight tweet Trump made clear he values the health of the stock market over the health of the American worker, and strongly implied he wants people to go back to work, despite the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

“We can’t shut in the economy,” Kudlow told a Fox News anchor, who had just mischaracterized remarks made earlier Monday by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. “The economic cost to individuals is just too great.”

“The President is right. The cure can’t be worse than the disease, and we’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs,” he insisted, making clear that the deaths of hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of Americans (per a federal government report) is just a “difficult tradeoff” for returning the stock markets back to their previous levels.

KUDLOW teases that Trump will try to send people back to work next week: “We can’t shut in the economy… POTUS is right: The cure can’t be worse than the disease, & we’re gonna have to make some difficult trade-offs… I spoke w/ POTUS about this very subject late last evening.” pic.twitter.com/OV02aLFGxh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2020

Kudlow’s remarks were not well-received.

It should’ve been a huge scandal when Trump appointed Larry Fucking Kudlow, a well-known charlatan, to a position of real power—something that the media recognized as a danger to the nation and never stopped asking questions about. Instead, they normalized it and now here we are. https://t.co/YXYCgHQDjV
— subscribe to my newsletter (@brianbeutler) March 23, 2020


Kudow, the drunk epidemiologist, is my favorite character in this season of the Trump show.
— Chris Zang (@CDmasterZang) March 23, 202

pic.twitter.com/ZmoIlBYv96

— CujoTheKitten (@cujothekitten) March 23, 2020

Larry Kudlow is 72.
Does he realize he’s a part of that trade off? https://t.co/wI669RSObg
— Yashar Al

  

(@yashar) March 23, 2020

The cruelty of what he’s saying – if people die, oh well, the economy must go on – is offensive in of itself, but it’s also frustrating to consider how relatively stupid and short sighted this line of thinking is given how much worse it will be by next week. https://t.co/fGpCpRaznr
— Michael Arceneaux (@youngsinick) March 23, 2020

There is no cure for the coronavirus, so that alone makes this a stupid thing to say. But presuming he means ending physical distancing to help the U.S. economy, it isn’t difficult to surmise that the workers most in jeopardy of infection won’t be guys like Trump or Larry Kudlow. https://t.co/DEQ9xcdCPm
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) March 23, 2020

Serious question: Has Larry Kudlow ever been right about anything? pic.twitter.com/SicpklmpFH
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2020

“I don’t care if people die! I want my Stock Market money back!” -Rich People of the US. https://t.co/9nV46p64ia
— Eric Powell (@goonguy) March 23, 2020


This is a deeply stupid, deeply false choice. The economy is not going to work if we don’t solve the public health crisis. You think restaurants are going to be all good on Saturday? Anyway pretending otherwise is wrong and trying to fool the S&P for a few hours. https://t.co/7qoAUwJ2uh
— Todd Schulte (@TheToddSchulte) March 23, 2020

When we’re 200 deep in the ER and your kid dies from a burst appendix because we were so overwhelmed, you can at least take solace that the cure wasn’t worse than the disease. https://t.co/DizsE8AirC
— Kellen Squire (@SquireForYou) March 23, 2020

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