The View hosts tell TV networks not to air Trump’s briefings anymore because they’re causing more harm than good

I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT SINCE 2016
March 23, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


The co-hosts of “The View” are still practicing social-distancing and due to her pregnancy, Meghan McCain is setting up her home studio. In her absence Monday, the women unleashed on the irresponsibility of President Donald Trump during his press conferences this weekend.

NBC News’ Peter Alexander sent President Donald Trump an easy softball question that would have allowed him an opportunity to calm fears across the nation. Instead, Trump flew off the handle calling it a “nasty question.”

Joy Behar thinks that Trump is treating the daily press briefings as a MAGA rally and is upset he’s not getting the cheers and adulation that he normally does. Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines agreed, saying that it was such an easy question that should have had an easy answer.

Behar said that the worst part is that Trump’s stupidity is causing Dr. Anthony Fauci to touch his face, referring to the “face-palm” moment the doctor had during one press briefing.

It prompted Hostin to say that there’s no reason for networks to even carry Trump’s briefings because they’re doing more to hurt than help and that there are other governors and leaders able to do the job that the president can’t.

AP reporter goes on uncharacteristic rant accusing Trump of treating coronavirus like bad news in a tabloid column

March 23, 2020 By Travis Gettys


White House correspondent Jonathan Lemire unloaded on President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

The Associated Press reporter usually remains reserved on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” even when offering criticism of the president, but Lemire blasted Trump’s leadership during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“It’s caused great frustration from those at the front lines, the mayors and governors across the nation,” Lemire said, addressing the lack of specifics regarding personal protective equipment for medical workers. “Yesterday, as I said, the FEMA head couldn’t say how many masks are being shipped.”

The president has been reluctant to fully invoke the Defense Production Act, Lemire said, because he thinks it’s a socialist policy — although Republican and Democratic governors alike are begging him to push out ventilators and masks.“Governors and mayors across the nation are asking him to do so,” Lemire said. “There’s a suggestion by some that he is not wanting to fully lean into this because he wants to point the finger elsewhere if the efforts fail. If he doesn’t fully enact it we see him repeatedly shift the onus to the states to come up with these items that they need.”

Trump isn’t able to address the crisis because his advisers are afraid to deliver bad news to him, Lemire said.

“We also know this, part of what’s hampering the issue, why there aren’t the details, partially why that he can’t — the administration hasn’t been able to level with the American public is that his advisors are sometimes afraid to level with him,” Lemire said. “The president is looking through this still with a glass, with rosy glasses, believing this will be over sooner than later, dismissing science health experts, sometimes in meetings, when aides come and suggest, ‘Hey, this is dire, and we’re trying to present to you a realistic sense of how long this can take and how bad it will get’ — he doesn’t want to hear it.”

“He is someone who his whole life has asserted his own sense of reality,” Lemire added. “He creates his own truth. That doesn’t work in this situation, and it may have worked with Page Six and some of the gossip pages and worked to a degree during the campaign, it is not going to work here. That is what alarms so many people in Washington and across the nation.”

Lemire said the president’s late-night tweet shows he still doesn’t understand the depth of this crisis and how long it might last.

“I will point to his tweet last night, late last night, he tweeted, ‘We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself, at the end of the 15-day period we’ll make a decision which way to go,'” Lemire said, “which lines up with what we’re starting to hear around him, the belief that he feels these draconian measures to restrict the economy may do more harm than good, even though that flies in the face of the health experts and he’s going to be looking to push to a return it to a normal society far sooner than any health expert or doctor would want.”

GOOD OLD JOE
Manchin erupts into shouting match with McConnell: You’re ‘more concerned about the health of Wall Street’

 March 23, 2020 By David Edwards


Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Monday for being more concerned with propping up the economy than providing supplies to hospitals fighting the novel coronavirus.

“You can throw all the money at Wall Street you want to,” Manchin said after McConnell blamed Democrats for a stalled stimulus bill. “People are afraid to leave their homes. They’re afraid of the health care. I’ve got workers who don’t have masks. I’ve got health care workers who don’t have gowns.”

“And it looks like we’re worried more about the economy than we are the health care and the wellbeing of the people of America,” the West Virginia senator complained.

McConnell interrupted: “The American people are waiting for us to act today! We don’t have time for this! We don’t have time for it!”

“Let me ask you a question,” Manchin implored.

“Answer my question!” McConnell demanded. “In what way would the Democratic Party be disadvantaged?”

“Thirty hours [of debate] or 30 days, as long as you have the votes, 51 votes rule,” Manchin said. “So the final vote is going to be on passage, whether you have to negotiate or not with us.”

“Here’s the way it works!” McConnell exclaimed. “We have been fiddling around as the senator from Maine pointed out for 24 hours…”

At that point, Manchin reclaimed his time, silencing McConnell.

“We just have a little different opinion about this,” Manchin said. “You can’t throw enough money to fix this if you can’t fix the health care.”

“My health care workers need to be protected,” he added. “But it seems like we’re talking about everything else about the economy versus the health care. That doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.”

“It seems like we’re more concerned about the health care of Wall Street,” Manchin remarked. “That’s the problem that I’ve had on this.”

Watch the video below from

‘Excuse me!’ Elizabeth Warren unloads on Bloomberg host after he blames Dems for stalled virus bill

March 23, 2020 By David Edwards


Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was confronted by Bloomberg host Jonathan Ferro on Monday over the stalled coronavirus relief legislation.

“In this bill, there are checks for everyday Americans,” Ferro told the senator. “The reason this bill hasn’t gone through is because of Democratic senators. Do you want to be the person that stopping people from getting their checks to meet their rent at the end of this month?”

“Excuse me,” Warren shot back. “The reason this bill has not gone through is because of Republicans senators and because of Republican leadership that pretended to negotiate for three days with the Democrats and then at the end of that time basically introduced their own bill.”

“We’ve laid out what our principles are,” she continued. “And that is you can’t give a half a billion dollars to giant industry and not help people at the grassroots.”

“You guys can get this done,” Ferro charged. “The only thing stopping it from happening is yourselves on both sides of the aisle. And there’s no point coming on the TV shows today and saying, ‘It’s the Republicans fault.’ Because you know what’s happening on the other networks, ‘It’s the Democrats fault.’ It’s all of your fault.”

Warren pointed out that she had been pushing the idea of relief checks for Americans “for weeks now.”

“And right now, we don’t have Republicans to negotiate with on those issues,” the senator added. “They’re not there. So, you tell me what you want to do. You want to bring one on this program? That’s fine with me.”

Watch the video below from Bloomberg.

‘Tell me you have a plan’: NYT columnist reveals how Trump’s erratic messaging has destabilized the business community

March 23, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that President Donald Trump’s greatest failure is in reassuring the nation.

During what has become a daily press conference, an NBC News reporter asked Trump what he says to Americans who are scared. It was the perfect opportunity for Trump to reassure the nation and calm sensitive markets. Instead of knocking the softball out of the park, Trump called it a “nasty question” and attacked the reporter.

Friedman reported on some of the ideas economics experts have devised to restart the economy. One of the key components is calming the nation.

“The beauty of his plan, as I see it, Jake, is that what is missing in the country is any sense that we have — the president went from ‘it is a hoax’, to ‘a war,’ to ‘I don’t want to fight this war,’ I want to get the economy back and people,” he explained. “What business leaders are looking for, not to mention average citizens, is tell me — just tell me you have a plan. If I need to shelter in place for a week, two weeks, whatever it takes, tell me you have a plan and that is what has been missing here.”

He also noted that when it comes to economic advice, no one should be listening to Trump’s top adviser Larry Kudlow, who lied on television saying that the virus was contained while it continued to spread.

“Nobody should be listening to him,” he said of Kudlow. “He was out a few weeks ago telling us that this was contained. So nobody should be listening to him.”

Watch Friedman below:
Embed the video 'Tell me you have a plan'  

Chamber of Commerce ripped for lobbying against Trump using Defense Production Act for coronavirus

March 23, 2020 By Bob Brigham


The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was blasted on Monday for lobbying against President Donald Trump using the Defense Production Act to respond to critical shortages during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Trump allowed himself to use the Act’s extraordinary powers but has apparently not yet used the new authority.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the heads of major corporations have lobbied the administration against using the act,” The New York Times reported Monday.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Chris Murphy (D-CN), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) sent a letter (PDF) to the Chamber of Commerce demanding answers.

“This report, if true, is shameful, revealing that the Chamber is actively working against efforts to address the urgent national COVID-19 pandemic, and is placing the short-term desires of its members above the economic and public health needs of hundreds of millions of American families,” they wrote. “You owe the public an explanation for this behavior

“We urge you to cease your lobbying efforts against measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic,” the lawmakers added.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scorches Susan Collins’s ‘crocodile tears’ after Dems reject McConnell’s slush fund bill

March 23, 2020 By Brad Reed


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Monday dropped the hammer on Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) after she went on an angry rant against Democrats who rejected the Senate GOP’s stimulus bill.

Reacting to Collins calling Democrats “disgraceful” for voting down the stimulus bill on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez pointed to the Maine senator’s own record to show that she’s not serious about fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

“Susan Collins can keep her crocodile tears,” she wrote. “She voted and fought HARD to strip pandemic prep funding. She helped drive the lack of preparation that we had leading up to this.”


Ocasio-Cortez then pointed to a Daily Beast report about the role that Collins played in 2009 in removing a proposed additional $870 million in funding for pandemic preparations from the economic stimulus package that was passed in response to the Great Recession.

“What’s actually disgraceful is her ‘I’m a Moderate Lady’ dance to cover up brutal policies and votes,” Ocasio-Cortez commented. “She’s defending an utterly corrupt bill to shower public money on friends and donors. Susan Collins is not a moderate. She just plays one on TV.”

Collins voted for the GOP tax scam.
She voted to appoint Kavanaugh.
She’s defending an utterly corrupt bill to shower public money on friends and donors.
Susan Collins is not a moderate. She just plays one on TV.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 23, 2020

Virus puts UK’s milkmen back in vogue

BRING THEM BACK IN CANADA, OUR HOUSE HAS A MILK BOX

READY TO USE.

March 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse



Britain’s largest milk delivery firm on Monday said it has seen a surge in business because of the coronavirus outbreak, as shoppers shun supermarkets for doorstep deliveries.

Milk & More said it has added 25,000 customers and is recruiting 100 milkmen and women to help deal with the extra demand, after a government call for social distancing measures.

Milkmen and women were once a familiar daily sight on British streets before dawn, delivering pint bottles of fresh milk from crates carried on electric-powered open-sided vans or floats.

Trade association Dairy UK said 89 percent of all milk bought in Britain in 1980 was on the doorstep but many firms closed because of changing consumer habits, and cheaper competition from supermarkets.

In the mid-1990s, just 30 percent of milk was still delivered, falling to 2.8 percent in 2015. Many of the customers are elderly.

Now as COVID-19 spreads, and the government recommends people stay at home to avoid close-contact transmission, Milk & More chief executive Patrick Muller said the service is back in vogue.

“We have been at the heart of the communities in which we serve for decades, but potentially we have never had such an important role as we do now in this current health crisis,” he added.

“The milk has gone berserk,” added milkman Colin Henderson, from Chester-le-Street in northeast England, who has been in the job for 40 years.

“I have got a pile of notes from customers and my round is taking an extra hour every day now. The dairy I work with said it is just manic…

“I just hope that after this is finished that people stay with us.”

Britain’s remaining milk delivery companies have been forced to adapt in recent years, and online orders have replaced rolled-up notes inside used bottles.

Many have diversified by adding grocery items to deliveries, from bread, bacon and eggs to toilet roll and even compost.

© 2020 AFP

Man dies and his wife is under critical condition after ingesting drug touted by Trump as a coronavirus treatment

March 23, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris

President Donald Trump has been touting the anti-malaria drug chloroquine phosphate as a possible solution for the treatment of the coronavirus. It isn’t a cure nor is it a prophylactic for the coronavirus. It also hasn’t been tested and because people are buying it up, scientists are having trouble finding it so they can test it.


HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents)…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020

While one man says that it helped him, another is dead.

A great early result from a drug that will start tomorrow in New York and other places! #COVIDー19 https://t.co/4F4Qk4WFtK
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

“Medical toxicologists and emergency physicians are warning the public against the use of inappropriate medications and household products to prevent or treat COVID-19. In particular, Banner Health experts emphasize that chloroquine, a malaria medication, should not be ingested to treat or prevent this virus,” reported the Banner Health system.

“Given the uncertainty around COVID-19, we understand that people are trying to find new ways to prevent or treat this virus, but self-medicating is not the way to do so,” said Dr. Daniel Brooks, who works at Banner’s Poison and Drug Information Center as medical director. “The last thing that we want right now is to inundate our emergency departments with patients who believe they found a vague and risky solution that could potentially jeopardize their health.”

The man who died was in his 60s and his wife is in critical condition after both of them ingested chloroquine phosphate. The chemical is an additive frequently used to clean fish tanks, though it is unclear if that’s how they obtained it. While they may sound the same, chloroquine is different from hydroxychloroquine as the latter is a less toxic derivative of chloroquine.

There have been numerous chloroquine overdoses in Nigeria the wake of Trump’s comments.

“We are strongly urging the medical community to not prescribe this medication to any non-hospitalized patients,” said Dr. Brooks.
Banner Health experts warn against self-medicating to prevent or treat COVID-19

PHOENIX (March 23, 2020) – Medical toxicologists and emergency physicians are warning the public against the use of inappropriate medications and household products to prevent or treat COVID-19. In particular, Banner Health experts emphasize that chloroquine, a malaria medication, should not be ingested to treat or prevent this virus.

“Given the uncertainty around COVID-19, we understand that people are trying to find new ways to prevent or treat this virus, but self-medicating is not the way to do so,” said Dr. Daniel Brooks, Banner Poison and Drug Information Center medical director. “The last thing that we want right now is to inundate our emergency departments with patients who believe they found a vague and risky solution that could potentially jeopardize their health.”

A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospital.

Most patients who become infected with COVID-19 will only require symptomatic care and self-isolation to prevent the risk of infecting others. Check first with a primary care physician. The routine use of specific treatments, including medications described as ‘anti-COVID-19’, is not recommended for non-hospitalized patients, including the anti-malarial drug chloroquine.

“We are strongly urging the medical community to not prescribe this medication to any non-hospitalized patients,” said Dr. Brooks.

For disinfecting surfaces, the Centers for Diseases and Control Prevention recommends the use of diluted household bleach solutions, alcohol solutions with at least 70% alcohol and common EPA-registered household disinfectants.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND RESOURCES:
Visit Banner’s COVID-19 webpage for more information about COVID-19.
Banner has an online symptom checker for those concerned about their symptoms.

Headquartered in Arizona, Banner Health is one of the largest nonprofit health care systems in the country. The system owns and operates 28 acute-care hospitals, Banner Health Network, Banner – University Medicine, academic and employed physician groups, long-term care centers, outpatient surgery centers and an array of other services; including Banner Urgent Care, family clinics, home care and hospice services, pharmacies and a nursing registry. Banner Health is in six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming. For more information, visit www.BannerHealth.com.

For further information: Alexis Kramer-Ainza, alexis.kramer-ainza@bannerhealth.com

Trump’s hyping of malaria drug to treat COVID-19 has caused such a shortage that doctors can’t test if it really works: MSNBC

March 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


President Donald Trump has touted the drug hydroxycholoroquine, a drug indicated to treat malaria and arthritis, as a possible treatment for the novel coronavirus — a premature claim, since the drug also has a number of dangerous side effects and could be toxic for patients with heart problems.

But as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted on Monday, Trump’s remarks have ultimately made it harder for doctors to even verify whether hydroxycholoroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19 — because some health care institutions have begun hoarding the drug and triggering shortages for medical scientists who are looking to test its efficacy:

The president touting hydroxychloroquine has, predictably, triggered hoarding of the drug to the point that even one hospital I know attempting to administer it as part of a trial is having a hard time getting its hands on the drug.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 23, 2020

Doctors currently have no clinically proven therapeutic treatment for COVID-19, and a vaccine could still be more than a year from entering public use.