Rick Scott demands congressional investigation into the WHO for ‘helping Communist China cover up’
HE IS FROM FLORIDA ITS IN THE WATER
THIS IS JUST THE USUAL JOHN BIRCH ANTI UN CONSPIRACY THEORY APPLIED TO WHO
March 31, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


Tuesday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) called for an investigation into the World Health Organization because he thinks they are aiding in a “Communist China cover up.”

Politico reported that the China hawk has long had issues with the WHO’s relationship with Beijing. China stopped counting cases of coronavirus weeks ago and removed American reporters from their country.

“The mission of the WHO is to get public health information to the world so every country can make the best decisions to keep their citizens safe. When it comes to coronavirus, the WHO failed,” said the Florida senator, claiming the WHO is intentionally spreading misinformation. “We know Communist China is lying about how many cases and deaths they have, what they knew and when they knew it — and the WHO never bothered to investigate further. Their inaction cost lives.”

While the number of coronavirus cases in China is inconsequential and confusion over the start of the virus hardly matters to the United States, any possible developments in treatment or virus control can be helpful to other countries

“Scott and other lawmakers have raised questions about the WHO’s refusal to grant membership to Taiwan, which the Chinese government has tried to alienate from the global community,” Politico reported.

The public timeline of the virus cited China’s learning of an outbreak of pneumonia in mid-November 2019. Weeks later, when it became clear that the “pneumonia” was actually contagious and spreading, China informed the WHO. It’s unknown if that timeline is truthful, but Scott did not give any indication that had had alternative information to refute it.

Scott wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier in March, attacking “Communist China” for the way they’ve responded to the coronavirus.

Having an accurate count of people in China doesn’t do anything to heal the sick people in the United States, though it does make President Donald Trump look better if the United States was not the top country in the world with the most coronavirus cases, as it is currently.

Scott also didn’t indicate whether he would be raising questions about Trump’s slow action on early on in the coronavirus crisis.

Read the full report at Politico.

Trump family unable to unload Washington hotel lease as commercial real estate market collapses due to pandemic: report


March 31, 2020 By Tom Boggioni


According to a report from the Washington Post, efforts by Donald Trump’s family to get out from under their lease of the government property that became the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. has come to a screeching halt as the coronavirus pandemic that has American’s hunkering down in their homes has buyers and investors also sitting and waiting to see what happens next.

Last October the Trump Organization announced plans to sell off the lease after complaining that their refusal to solicit foreign business cost them “more than $9 million,” in a glossy brochure issued in November that noted they had turned down bookings for “17,100 room nights in 2019, resulting in $5.3 million in lost room revenue and $3.9 million in lost food and beverage revenue,” reported Politico at the time.

The Washington Post is now reporting those plans have been put on hold.

“Trump’s firm, which he still owns, has had to press pause on the proposed sale of its D.C. hotel lease due to the market’s collapse as potential buyers wait for banks and investors to return normal operations,” the report states, adding, “The company’s sales representative, Jeffrey Davis of JLL, confirmed to The Washington Post that the proposed sale of Trump’s lease to the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion has been set aside as the industry recovers.”

According to Davis, “We have toured only the most discerning buyers and are proud to be representing such an iconic asset. Trump International Hotel, Washington D.C. is one of the finest hotels anywhere in the world and we look forward to working with the Trump Organization on finding the right fit once the industry is back up and running.”

The inability to dump the lease comes at a bad time for the Trump family with the report pointing out that seven of the Trump Organization’s ten most profitable properties are currently sitting idle due to coronavirus concerns and an attendant drop in traffic.

‘I am scared and enraged’: Pandemic expert says CDC reaction under Trump ‘super different’ from Obama

March 31, 2020 By David Edwards


Pandemic expert Theresa MacPhail of the Stevens Institute of Technology said this week that she “couldn’t have been more wrong” about the way the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) handled the novel coronavirus outbreak.

MacPhail told Vice that she expected the CDC to have a more “robust” response to the virus than China had.

“I just assumed that the U.S. system would be a little bit better, would be a little bit more robust and do more testing and containment than China was able to do, and I just couldn’t have been more wrong,” she lamented.

According to MacPhail, something changed at the CDC after President Barack Obama left office.

“One thing that’s super different is that the CDC in 2009 provided central leadership,” she said of the H1N1 outbreak. “They were proactively reaching out to state, regional, and local health officials saying, ‘Here’s what you need to be doing. Here’s what this should look like.’ And people did it.”

“I am scared and enraged because there’s no central authority here,” MacPhail added. “I don’t understand what’s going on.The CDC isn’t giving press briefings. They’re just absent. And that could be because the administration is muzzling them. Or it could mean that there’s disarray inside the CDC. And I guess all of that will come out.”

Read the entire interview from Vice.

Ex-Trump health advisor cornered on CNN for administration’s failure to heed warnings in pandemic briefing book

March 31, 2020 By Tom Boggioni

POPPY HARLEY CNN            KATY TALENTO

A former health adviser to Donald Trump was grilled on CNN Tuesday morning over the fact that the current administration was handed a briefing book on possible pandemic scenarios back in 2016 and but did not follow it, with the host emphasizing, “doctors are dying.”

Speaking with Poppy Harlow, infectious disease epidemiologist Katy Talento was attempting to make the case that there will be time later to figure out what went wrong with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic under the president’s stewardship when the CNN host brought up the briefing book that outlined actions that government could take to stem such an event.

“As someone who advised the president and his team on health issues and who has the background that you have, what do you think the impact has been of the president for weeks until recently downplaying the magnitude of this pandemic and saying things like just in mid-march, he said it is something nobody expected when we now know there was this 69-page briefing book put together by the NSC that played out what happens in a pandemic and asks questions like is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” host Harlow asked. “I ask this of all the doctors out there, the ones in Brownsville, Brooklyn, who told us yesterday they’re going to Home Depot, some of them, to buy protective gear.”

“That guidance in 2016 was not taken by the administration, what can we learn from it going forward?” she pressed.

“I think the president isn’t always briefed on every single preparedness activity that is going on at the staff level and I’m actually encouraged that those plans and those conversations were going on. I know that the global health team both –,” Talento attempted before being cut off.

“They didn’t heed the advice and the president is saying no one thought anything like this could happen, but they did,” Harlow reminded her.

“A lot of people in the White House and in all the agencies of course did think something like this could happen. The fact that there is a briefing book shows you that everyone was thinking about this — just six months prior to this event the president signed an executive order on pandemic flu preparedness,” Talento parried

“But, Katy, why — my question is it is great to have a briefing book,” the CNN host shot back. “But if it is not utilized, and if there are doctors dying right now, and nurses dying right now, and first responders without the proper gear, I’m asking what lessons can be learned and applied for the future?”


“It is a good question,” the CNN guest conceded. “I think that’s probably one of the most important lessons is the role of our state partners. I will say that the states are an integral essential part of our pandemic preparedness efforts over the past years and years and those essential partners really have the freedom to stockpile things for their own people and not be at the mercy of the federal government.”


Watch below:

‘Utter train wreck’: Brutal report outlines how many things the federal government got wrong about the coronavirus pandemic

March 31, 2020 By Brad Reed

Politico on Tuesday published a damning bullet-point list of past Trump administration talking points about the COVID-19 pandemic and showed how all of them have fallen apart in a matter of mere days.

“You’d be forgiven, in this time of trouble and distress, for wondering whether your federal government has a handle on this pandemic, or if it’s a complete and utter train wreck,” the publication wrote before proceeding to dissect multiple Trump administration falsehoods about the spread of the disease.

“First they told us they had the coronavirus under control; now they tell us hundreds of thousands of people could die,” Politico writes. “First they told us tests are available, plentiful and easy to get; now we hear stories almost daily about how some people can’t get tested, and if they can, many are waiting weeks for results. We’ve heard some grim stories about people dying before their results are in.”

The report went on to document how Trump made false claims about the availability of the Google coronavirus testing website, as well as bogus projections about the country being ready to reopen by Easter.

Most damning, however, was the president’s lies about New York not really needing the tens of thousands of ventilators it has been requesting.

“Now, in New York — one of the world’s most important cities — a top hospital is telling doctors to ‘think more critically’ about who to give assistive air to,” Politico writes.

Trump supporters are already questioning coronavirus death toll to make the president look good

March 31, 2020 By Brad Reed

Some prominent Trump-supporting media personalities are already trying to defend the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic by questioning the official number of people who have died after being infected.

As documented by Media Matters researcher Jason Campbell, right-wing radio host Mark Levin this week suggested that the official coronavirus body count tallies shouldn’t be taken at face value because there’s no way of knowing whether someone who died shortly after getting infected really died from the virus.

“I cannot find anywhere the definition of what it means to die from this virus,” Levin said on Monday. “In other words, if I got into the hospital, and I already have a very, very bad heart, and I’m not given a lot of time, and I have this virus and it puts me over the edge, does that count as dying from heart failure, heart disease, or a heart attack — or the virus? I don’t know!”

Levin wasn’t alone, however, as Campbell also found that Trump-loving Fox Nation hosts Diamond and Silk also said this week that the death toll is being exaggerated to damage Trump politically.

“In a matter of two weeks, a thousand people supposedly died from the coronavirus,” Rochelle “Silk” Richardson said this week. “But it took 39 days, from January up until February… for the first person to die!”

Richardson then said that the media deliberately made the number of COVID-19 deaths go up after Trump announced that he wanted to see the country reopened by Easter “to make him look bad.”

In reality, the increase in deaths from the virus was projected by scientific models to increase between now and Easter, so it’s not surprising that the number of deaths skyrocketed shortly after Trump made his since-retracted announcement about reopening the country by April 12th.

Mark Levin says coronavirus numbers are misleading, claiming “I cannot find anywhere the definition of what it means to die from this virus” pic.twitter.com/hYFlL2m1NU
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 31, 2020

Diamond & Silk are speculating coronavirus deaths are being inflated to make Trump look bad pic.twitter.com/hBnB7422UP
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 30, 2020

‘You are useless!’ Americans rage as Trump admits he’s watching cable news amid the coronavirus pandemic

March 31, 2020 By Travis Gettys


President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning watching television and commenting on what he watched, as doctors and nurses beg for more supplies to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

The president reacted at 7:27 a.m. to thanks from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which Fox News reported shortly after 6 a.m., and he then tweeted out a response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who gave a lengthy interview to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that began shortly after 8 a.m.

“New York Governor Cuomo says President Trump has been “very helpful.” @foxandfriends Thank you, everybody is working very hard!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2020

I watched a portion of low rated (very) Morning Psycho (Joe) this Morning in order to see what Nancy Pelosi had to say, & what moves she was planning to further hurt our Country. Actually, other than her usual complaining that I’m a terrible person, she wasn’t bad. Still praying!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2020


The president’s tweets prompted some to wonder whether he ought to get to work.

don’t u have a fuckin job https://t.co/XVtDCLmE9Y
— darth™ (@darth) March 31, 2020

When Pelosi was asked on Morning Joe about the fact that she & Trump haven't talked in months, she said they talk thru TV appearances like that one, that he'd be watching.
Sure enuf, he was
But she probably didn't expect to be accused of "planning to further hurt our Country." https://t.co/cTTaRXNJyh
— Jackie Calmes (@jackiekcalmes) March 31, 2020

@realDonaldTrump we are in the middle of a pandemic. Why are you watching TV? https://t.co/rlafjUkfVS
— Joshua Ryan Myers (@jrmyers3) March 31, 2020

Good to see you are still focused on the crisis at hand.

—

Mark Hartig

(@markhartig) March 31, 2020


Obviously working hard and laser-focused on helping Americans get through this tough time.

— Paul

 

(@pablo_honey1) March 31, 2020


You are a terrible person.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) March 31, 2020

Well, she was  

correct that the only way to communicate with you is through television. God help us all.
— Jack Laffey (@laffeylaw) March 31, 2020


Looks like this deadly virus hasn't changed your routine one bit. Still hate-watching certain shows. And getting policy advice from Fox & Friends.
— Leonbergers (@leonbergers) March 31, 2020

Trump would like you to know he has time to watch television and throw insults on social media. Working hard for the people.
— Troy Dignon (@troydignon) March 31, 2020

The president is sitting around watching TV again! Resign already!
— JschllN (@jschlln) March 31, 2020

Imagine if @realDonaldTrump put as much effort to combating the coronavirus as he does watching TV and rage tweeting. #DoNothingDonald https://t.co/ZwCu94cpl1
— Richard W. (@IceManNYR) March 31, 2020

Why the hell are you sitting around just watching tv???? People around country are working 24/7 to slow the spread of this virus and you are live tweeting tv shows and rage tweeting. You are useless!
— franklyscarlet Stay the F@@k Home (@pjp195501) March 31, 2020

We know you spend more time watching tv than working.
— StormKitty (@StormKitty4) March 31, 2020

Jerry Falwell Jr seems to want credit from Trump for drinking his coronavirus Kool-Aid: op-ed

March 31, 2020 By Sky Palma


Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. has reopened the school’s campus in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, according to a report from the New York Times, “nearly a dozen” students at the evangelical school have developed symptoms similar to those of COVID-19 as of this Friday, with at least one student testing positive for the virus.

Falwell, an avid Trump supporter, has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, even insisting at one point that attempts to control its spread are nothing more than a plot to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. Writing in the Washington Post this Monday, Michael Gerson contends Falwell Jr’s response to the crisis “indicates the staggering level of ignorance” that informs his leadership skills, as evidenced by the “constant churn of mixed messages that Falwell has contributed to our national debate.”
“Who is Falwell serving instead of students, parents, staff, his board and the Lynchburg, Va., community?” Gerson writes. “Let’s see. Falwell has contempt for the weak. He is dismissive of experts. He traffics in conspiracy theories. He attacks his critics with infantile putdowns and demeaning names. And he refuses to admit when he is dangerously wrong.”

“Falwell has laid down the cross to follow Trump,” he concludes.

Read Gerson’s full op-ed over at The Washington Post

APRIL 1 APRIL FOOLS

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Marriott says new data breach affects 5.2 million guests

by Dee-Ann Durbin

This April 20, 2011 file photo shows Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront in 

Portland, Ore. Marriott says guests' names, loyalty account information and 

other personal details may have been accessed in the second major data

 breach to hit the company in less than two years. The world's largest hotel

 company says on Tuesday, March 31, 2020, approximately 5.2 million guests

 may have been affected. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Marriott says guests' names, loyalty account information and other personal details may have been accessed in the second major data breach to hit the company in less than two years.

Marriott said Tuesday approximately 5.2 million guests worldwide may have been affected. The information taken may have included names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, loyalty information for linked companies like airlines and room preferences. Marriott said it's still investigating but it doesn't believe credit card information, passport numbers or driver's license information was accessed.

Marriott said it noticed an unexpected amount of guest information was accessed at the end of February using the login credentials of two employees at a franchised property. The company said it believes the activity began in mid-January.

Marriott has disabled those logins and is assisting authorities in their investigation. The company didn't say whether the employees whose logins were used were suspected.

In November 2018, Marriott announced a massive data breach in which hackers accessed information on as many as 383 million guests. In that case, Marriott said unencrypted passport numbers for at least 5.25 million guests were accessed, as well as credit card information for 8.6 million guests. The affected hotel brands were operated by Starwood before it was acquired by Marriott in 2016.

The FBI led the investigation of that data theft, and investigators suspected the hackers were working on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the rough equivalent of the CIA.

Marriott said Tuesday it has informed guests of the new data breach. The Bethesda, Maryland-based company is offering affected guests free enrollment in a personal information monitoring service for up to one year.

"Marriott also remains committed to further strengthening its protections to detect and remediate incidents such as this in the future," the company said in a statement.

Marriott faces $123 million fine in UK for data breach

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