*I'm pretty sure the deadliest fake news in history is that which came out of tRump's own mouth and from his Fox News advocates when they were underplaying the danger of COVID 19.

Anarchistbear said:

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Pelosi is a better comparison. She is even worse than Trump

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Why don't you write a fact based supporting essay on that talking point.

Surprised Bearister hasn't posted this Axios report yet:

Docs: Navarro memos warning mass death circulated West Wing in January

Quote:

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In late January, President Trump's economic adviser Peter Navarro warned his White House colleagues the novel coronavirus could take more than half a million American lives and cost close to $6 trillion, according to memos obtained by Axios.

• By late February, Navarro was even more alarmed, and he warned his colleagues, in another memo, that up to two million Americans could die of the virus.

Driving the news: Navarro's grim estimates are set out in two memos one dated Jan. 29 and addressed to the National Security Council, the other dated Feb. 23 and addressed to the president. The NSC circulated both memos around the White House and multiple agencies.

• In the first memo, which the New York Times was first to report on, Navarro makes his case for "an immediate travel ban on China."
• The second lays the groundwork for supplemental requests from Congress, with the warning: "This is NOT a time for penny-pinching or horse trading on the Hill."

Why it matters: The president quickly restricted travel from China, moved to delay re-entry of American travelers who could be infected, and dispatched his team to work with Congress on stimulus funds.

• But Trump was far slower to publicly acknowledge the sort of scenarios Navarro had put in writing.

One senior administration official who received Navarro's memos said at the time they were skeptical of his motives and thus his warnings: "The January travel memo struck me as an alarmist attempt to bring attention to Peter's anti-China agenda while presenting an artificially limited range of policy options."

• "The supplemental memo lacked any basis for its projections, which led some staff to worry that it could needlessly rattle markets and may not direct funding where it was truly needed."

Navarro declined to comment for this story.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon defended Navarro's motives, calling the memos "prophetic" and saying Navarro was forced to put his concerns in writing because "there was total blockage to get these facts in front of the President of the United States."

• The "naivete, arrogance and ignorance" of White House advisers who disagreed with Navarro "put the country and the world in jeopardy," Bannon said, adding that Navarro was sidelined from the task force after the memo.
• "In this Kafkaesque nightmare, nobody would pay attention to him or the facts."

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So much for "nobody could have predicted this." Say what you want about Pete Navarro, but seems like his team pretty much nailed it and given the White House's inabiity to discern fact from fiction, he was completely ignored. I am not nominally a fan of Navarro - I think he has no business being in the white house and his China agenda is dangerous (wouldn't it be great if we weren't deep into a trade war with China and didn't still have tariffs on ventilator parts?) but he got this one right. Of course, he's now arguing with Fauci over the effectiveness of HCQ so ...

Unit2Sucks said:

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Surprised Bearister hasn't posted this Axios report yet:

Docs: Navarro memos warning mass death circulated West Wing in January

Quote:

---

In late January, President Trump's economic adviser Peter Navarro warned his White House colleagues the novel coronavirus could take more than half a million American lives and cost close to $6 trillion, according to memos obtained by Axios.

• By late February, Navarro was even more alarmed, and he warned his colleagues, in another memo, that up to two million Americans could die of the virus.

Driving the news: Navarro's grim estimates are set out in two memos one dated Jan. 29 and addressed to the National Security Council, the other dated Feb. 23 and addressed to the president. The NSC circulated both memos around the White House and multiple agencies.

• In the first memo, which the New York Times was first to report on, Navarro makes his case for "an immediate travel ban on China."
• The second lays the groundwork for supplemental requests from Congress, with the warning: "This is NOT a time for penny-pinching or horse trading on the Hill."

Why it matters: The president quickly restricted travel from China, moved to delay re-entry of American travelers who could be infected, and dispatched his team to work with Congress on stimulus funds.

• But Trump was far slower to publicly acknowledge the sort of scenarios Navarro had put in writing.

One senior administration official who received Navarro's memos said at the time they were skeptical of his motives and thus his warnings: "The January travel memo struck me as an alarmist attempt to bring attention to Peter's anti-China agenda while presenting an artificially limited range of policy options."

• "The supplemental memo lacked any basis for its projections, which led some staff to worry that it could needlessly rattle markets and may not direct funding where it was truly needed."

Navarro declined to comment for this story.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon defended Navarro's motives, calling the memos "prophetic" and saying Navarro was forced to put his concerns in writing because "there was total blockage to get these facts in front of the President of the United States."

• The "naivete, arrogance and ignorance" of White House advisers who disagreed with Navarro "put the country and the world in jeopardy," Bannon said, adding that Navarro was sidelined from the task force after the memo.
• "In this Kafkaesque nightmare, nobody would pay attention to him or the facts."

---

So much for "nobody could have predicted this." Say what you want about Pete Navarro, but seems like his team pretty much nailed it and given the White House's inabiity to discern fact from fiction, he was completely ignored. I am not nominally a fan of Navarro - I think he has no business being in the white house and his China agenda is dangerous (wouldn't it be great if we weren't deep into a trade war with China and didn't still have tariffs on ventilator parts?) but he got this one right. Of course, he's now arguing with Fauci over the effectiveness of HCQ so ...

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If Navarro is the smartest person in Trump's inner circle, we're fu$&ed.

Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump's Failures - The Atlantic


https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/

" That the pandemic occurred is not Trump's fault.

The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump's fault.

The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump's fault.

The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump's fault.

That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump's fault.

Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump's fault too.

Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump's fault again.

The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump's fault: They did it to protect him.

The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump's fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time.

The severity of the economic crisis is Trump's fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities.

The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus's threat to his crew? Trump's fault.

The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump's fault.

The insertion of Trump's arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump's fault. ....

Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego. Americans have become sadly used to Trump's blustery self-praise and his insatiable appetite for flattery. During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.....

As the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County....

He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining. Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump. An Arkansas pastor told The Washington Post of congregants "ready to lick the floor" to support the president's claim that there is nothing to worry about. On March 15, the Trump-loyal governor of Oklahoma tweeted a since-deleted photo of himself and his children at a crowded restaurant buffet. "Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. It's packed tonight!" Those who took their cues from Trump and the media who propagandized for him, and all Americans, will suffer for it." David Frum

Cue TDS meme/rant from GB4L in 3...2...

In the end when times are bad they all become Keynesians and look to big government to bail them out.



COVID Is Forcing the GOP to Admit Its Ideology Is Delusional
Trump's DHS declares undocumented workers "essential," while Steve Mnuchin scrambles to reconstruct the "administrative state."

Read in New York Magazine: https://apple.news/Aywo9xsRLQu6cSxbE4eS04w