During a very contentious interview with a spokesperson for Donald Trump's re-election campaign, CNN host Poppy Harlow was forced to cut-off senior advisor Mercedes Schlapp and list off all the times the president predicted the COVID-19 crisis would subside on its own.
In the interview, which ran over 15 minutes, the CNN host and the Trump spokesperson repeatedly talked over each other, with Harlow at one time telling her guest that they had plenty of time to discuss the topics at hand and to please let her finish asking her questions.
As host Harlow attempted to press her on the growing caseload of COVID-19 infections, Schlapp attempted to bring former Vice President Joe Biden into the conversation which forced the CNN host to stop her.
"Mercedes, Mercedes, I think it does a disservice," Harlow interrupted. "We have time so we don't have to talk over one another. I think it does a disservice to our viewers to do that -- let's not fight, let's talk about the facts."
"Here are the facts," she proceeded. "You said the president didn't downplay this. Exactly one month ago today, the president said 'it's fading away.' January 22nd in Davos, Switzerland, 'it's totally under control.' February 22nd, 'we shut it down.' February 10th it 'goes away in April with the heat, a lot of people think.' February 26th 'the risk to the American people remains low.' February 28th, quote, 'this is their new hoax.' May 8th, 'It is going to go away without a vaccine,' that's what I'm talking about."
"What the president has been able to accomplish with the working -- working with our both Democrat and Republican governors is ensuring that they have the resources they need to combat the coronavirus. This president --," the spokesperson parried before being pulled up short again.
"They don't have the resources they need," Harlow cut in. "Republican Governor Larry Hogan..."
"He praised the president," Schlapp interrupted. "He praised the president beforehand."
"Yes, he did," Harlow explained. "He had to fly in $9 million worth of masks from South Korea because he could not get enough. He said that he was waiting around for the president to run the nation's response and [it] was hopeless.'
Anthony Scaramucci believes President Donald Trump's narcissism is causing him to self-destruct his political career.
The former White House press secretary, who flamed out of the administration quickly and spectacularly three years ago this month, predicted the president would lose the election badly, and Scaramucci wonders if there's a subconsciously intentional reason behind the loss, reported The Guardian.
"He’s on a trajectory of a downward slope," Scaramucci said, "and he’s doing something – because I know the son of a bitch well – he’s doing something that I find fascinating. He’s subconsciously self-detonating."
“He’s doing things every single day that is literally forcibly unravelling his political career, and that is the hidden secret, the underbelly of a narcissist," Scaramucci added. "They have a very full blown self-destructive streak in their personalities. He’s got his hand on the self detonator now."
Scaramucci said the president's "craziness and his viciousness" were repellent to many voters, who have had nearly four years to judge Trump's conduct in office.
“He’s going to get destroyed," Scaramucci said. "It’s not even close how badly he’s going to get destroyed. His ardent support is wilting and, by November, there’ll be over 200,000 people dead from the coronavirus. This is not 2016, where he’s an unknown entity and you have this very polarizing figure, Hillary Clinton. He’s also got guys like me that are Republicans that are going to work on hiving off 3 [percent] to 5 percent of the Republicans.”
Scaramucci has known Trump for years, and said he's no longer the "garrulous" and "charming" man he was 10 years ago, but had curdled into a humorless parody of himself.
“Now you would find him to be more brittle, defensive and self-exclamatory where he’s just launching into these run-on long sentences" Scaramucci said. "He’s having a conversation with himself, and it’s a rationalization of who he is and what he’s doing and he’s trying to explain to everybody that he knows it all, he’s got it all figured out, and that’s a great tragedy in itself because nobody has it all figured out.”
The one-time administration official said he'd decided to speak out against the president he once backed out of moral obligation.
“I said, ‘Okay, that’s enough for me and I cannot be affiliated with this any more,'" Scaramucci said. "I’m not going to disavow my personal integrity and my life story to support this man. I’m not going to make the equivocations that these other people are making: ‘Well, it’s Republican, it’s judges, it’s policies.’"
"No, the guy stinks and he’s a racist and he’s an American nativist," he added.
An entire liquor store full of customers and employees yelled at a woman who refused to wear a face mask while in the store -- and the woman wouldn't back down, while also refusing multiple requests to leave.
According to Westword, the video was filmed by a woman named Ruby Musso and was posted on her own Facebook page in an apparent attempt to get sympathy after multiple customers and workers shamed her for refusing to wear a mask.
The video starts off with an angry masked woman ramming her shopping cart into Musso's and telling her, "Please leave this f*cking store!"
Musso then tried to claim that the woman had "almost physically threatened me" by ramming her shopping cart, but other customers yelled back at her and told her to put on a mask.
"You're physically threatening everyone else by not wearing a mask!" one man shouted at her.
All the while, employees of Molly's Spirits politely tried to get Musso to leave -- but she refused and insisted on waiting until the police arrived.
When the employees kept pushing her to leave, she yelled out, "Look at these Nazis!"
While the woman tried to claim that it was supposedly illegal for stores to refuse her service for not wearing a mask, Westword notes that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis this week "issued a statewide order directing everyone in the state age ten and above to wear masks in public settings" and had "previously emphasized that businesses were in their rights to refuse service to those without face coverings."
Speaking with MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski on Friday morning, the former head of the Republican National Committee hammered the Republican governor of Georgia for following Donald Trump's lead and not taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously as their states are swamped with new infections.
To set the stage for Michael Steele, host Brzezinski went off on a rant about the opposition by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to mandating wearing masks to avoid contracting COVID-19, calling the governor's decision "stupidity."
"The stupidity is boundless here, it is truly boundless," she began. "I mean, masks have been determined to keep people safe, it is a legitimate and credible mitigation technique. It even could be possible to help businesses open up and revive the economy if we have uniform social distancing guidelines, mask use, and a number of other measures."
"But since the government has botched this so much, since Trump himself has botched this so much, this governor now is, I don't know, desperately trying to get some attention from Donald Trump," she added. "These idiots, these idiots just want to push against mitigation measures that scientists and doctors that we're having on these shows, all shows, they go on Fox, they all say mask use works, hand sanitizer works, social distancing works."
Asked to respond, Steele began, "There are two words you used that are operative here, stupid and desperate."
"That is a dangerous combination particularly in the hands of a governor who doesn't have the competency to figure out that masks save lives and that masks, particularly when you're in the middle of a surge within your own state are there to make sure you don't lose control of that situation," he continued. "What the Mayor [Keisha Lance Bottoms] is doing, and all she is saying is, 'I'm not shutting down your business, I'm not telling you you can't gather, you can't socialize. I'm saying you have to wear masks in order to protect yourselves and your community.' So there's a political side of this, too, and you put your finger on it at the end there."
A jogger flipped out, flipped off and then physically assaulted a Washington woman who asked him to cover his face while exercising.
The woman was walking the track between Clark College and Hudson’s Bay High School on Wednesday when she got into an argument with a man who was not wearing a mask or following social distancing guidelines, reported The News Tribune.
She tried keeping her distance, but the woman told KATU-TV that the man kept pace with her.
Washington imposed a statewide mask mandate requiring face coverings in public when a six-foot distance cannot be maintained, and violations may result in misdemeanor charges.
The woman asked the jogger to cover his face if he would not stay away from her, and she said he started shouting profanity and making obscene gestures.
She grabbed her phone and took pictures, warned the man she would call police if he didn't leave her alone and then walked toward her car.
The man followed her to her car and cornered her, and the woman said he assaulted her when she tried to spray him with mace.
“I’m just like, sick to my stomach," she said later. "I could have died."
The woman told the TV station the man struck her in the ribs, back and head, and she claims she suffered an unspecified fracture in the assault.
She said another woman who had been with the man stood by watching while he assaulted her.
Police are seeking both the man and the woman who was with him.
“I just don’t ever want that man to be able to do that to a woman again," the victim said. "It’s horrifying."
During an appearance on CNN, host Alisyn Camerota grilled Duncan about the lawsuit, and he often responded with evasive responses that did not directly answer her questions.
"Why is Gov. Kemp... suing [Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms] about this?" she asked.
"Well, I would point you to the governor and the attorney general in the suit they filed yesterday, you know?" he replied. "It's my job, I'm using this platform to really encourage everybody to wear masks."
Duncan went on to emphasize that wearing masks should be an issue of personal responsibility and not one that required government mandates.
Camerota was not satisfied with this reply, however.
"We have laws about drunk driving because sometimes people are not personally responsible," she said. "Are you saying that you disagree with the governor's lawsuit?"
"I absolutely see his intentions around the hard, around the inability to enforce people, you know, are you going to walk up to somebody, as a law enforcement officer, 'You didn't it have over your nose so here's the citation?'" he replied.
According to a report at Politico, Donald Trump's administration is using loopholes in the appointment process to install young inexperienced loyalists in key Pentagon posts that has Democrats and defense analysts concerned.
The report notes that Congress is being left out of the loop on many of the appointments which have led to fears that experienced candidates for other jobs will pass on working at the Pentagon fearing a "politicized" atmosphere.
As Politico's Lara Seligman writes, the administration is avoiding candidate scrutiny by using loopholes included in the Vacancies Act.
"Under the Vacancies Act, a person who is not Senate-confirmed cannot serve as an acting undersecretary or higher. But the act allows the president to grant exceptions in three cases: someone confirmed to a position at a different agency; the “first assistant”; and someone who has been employed by the agency for at least 90 days and paid at least at a GS-15 rate," the report states.
According to Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the Naval War College, it is concerning that, "the criterion that seems to be getting these particular young, inexperienced people in is personal loyalty to the president."
“This can actually undermine the entire idea of a meritocratic democracy because it creates power with connection with the patron as opposed to power within the structure of the system," she explained.
Case in point is the appointment of Michael Kratsios, a 33-year-old White House chief technology officer, to head up research and engineering for the entire Department of Defense, despite not having experience in engineering.
Kratsios, who has a bachelor's degree in political science, is replacing Michael Griffin, a former NASA administrator with a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering," Seligman wrote.
According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the president is undermining the Pentagon and damaging its mission.
“This administration is shamefully circumventing the Senate confirmation process to install partisan puppets in senior Pentagon posts," he said. "By exploiting loopholes, they seek to escape congressional and public scrutiny of these underqualified officials. This is a threat to our national security and I will keep fighting to ensure rigorous oversight of executive branch appointees.”
According to Chip Unruh, a spokesperson for Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the president is having difficulty finding qualified people to work for him.
"The real problem is the Trump Administration simply can’t attract top tier talent for these critical posts," he said before adding. "The President prioritizes blind fealty to him above competence and it shows."
Biotech company Moderna, one of many organizations developing a vaccine for COVID-19, published results from an early-stage test of its experimental mRNA vaccine in the New England Journal of Medicine July 14. Vanderbilt University Medical Center staff scientist and protein chemistry expert Sanjay Mishra explains what the results of the phase 1 trial mean.
In this video interview, Sanjay Mishra summarizes the results of a phase 1 trial from one COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
What was Moderna testing for?
They were testing for two things – the proof of concept, and whether there are any side effects.
What were the results?
The results that just came out in the New England Journal of Medicine are interim. We have to be really clear about it.
This particular batch of results is from 45 adults between the ages of 18 and 55 who were not screened for infection [for COVID-19]. So we would call them healthy adults, although no serology or PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests were done before the trial began.
They were given one of the three doses – 25, 100 or 250 micrograms. More than half the participants had discomfort, like fatigue, chills, headaches, myalgia (muscle pain) and pain at the injection site. After 28 days, the exact same dose was given a second time. After the second dose, these events of discomfort were far more common. But in general, you can say there was nothing severe reported. And then on the 29th day, blood was drawn.
These blood samples were tested for their antibody response. They found that the antibody responses, as you would expect, were higher with the higher dose. They were slightly higher than what you would expect to see in patients who had been recovering from a coronavirus infection.
They tested these things in three different ways. One of these is where you are testing the quantity of antibodies made. Then they also tested the efficacy of these antibodies in the serum through two different methods. All in all, it does seem that there is binding and neutralization of the virus.
But the second batch of results, which is from the older patients, has still not been announced. So that would be coming farther down the line. After that, they hope to come up with the third batch of results, which will include the durability of immunity from both of these age groups in one batch.
The results are promising. At least they proved the concept. The results show that when you give this vaccine, the body makes antibodies. But we don’t know whether those antibodies will lead to immunity in the body because all of the results that we have are observed outside the body [in blood samples].
And so that proof will come from a larger data set in the next stage. Then we would know whether the people who have received these vaccines are at least 50% less likely to become infected [to meet FDA guidelines for vaccine efficacy]. So they are good results, they are promising results, but they are pretty early in the game, so to speak.
Can you explain what the company’s mRNA vaccine is and why it is different?
Vaccines are meant to train the immune system to attack the disease-causing virus. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, there is a spike protein, or the S-protein, which is the flag that the immune system needs to recognize as the signature of the virus. So the goal of a vaccine is to train your immune system to recognize the S-protein, and then trigger the immune response. This S-protein is the standard in all coronaviruses, that’s why they’re called coronaviruses, because the “corona” is the crown.
Rather than provide a vaccine made from viral proteins, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is composed of synthetic viral mRNA. These molecules are injected into people and cellular protein-making machines, called ribosomes, read and translate the mRNA. It’s these proteins that then trigger an immune response.
Traditionally, the vaccines involved either a weakened virus, or a preparation of the virus that would have contained (in this case) the spike protein. In the cleanest method you would have produced the spike protein in the lab and then you would have used that as the immunization candidate.
All those methods are time-consuming and require extensive quality control. And usually there is a lot of headache in scaling up from lab to production. Moderna’s vaccine and another candidate vaccine bypasses this process by using mRNA , or messenger RNA. It is genetic coding material which will help your body produce that protein. This way you don’t have to deal with the production of the protein in the lab and risk creating an impure protein sample, which can be clinically difficult to standardize and then can be dangerous as well.
I feel cautiously optimistic. The study provides promising data on the safety and immunogenicity, or the ability to provoke an immune response. It is a good starting point for training the immunity of the body. But if I can paraphrase Robert Frost, we still have miles to go before we sleep.
Vaccine development is complex and there’s a lot more work that needs to be done before this can become an actual marketable candidate.
This first batch of data is from the 18- to 55-year-old group. We do not know what the dosing would be for the older age group, which is the most vulnerable to COVID-19. As we age, we do not produce as many antibodies, which generally leads to poor vaccine response. So the question is: Will they have to go for a higher dose, which is usually the case in flu vaccines. The higher dosage, which is 250 micrograms, has led to somewhat more severe side effects in this study. So then how would that be balanced? It is still difficult to say.
What other vaccines are being developed?
There are 178 COVID-19 vaccines in various stages of development and 14 are leading to human trials, including from AstraZeneca and others. There are more potential candidates from Merck, Johnson & Johnson and others. There is a similar vaccine that is already being tested by Pfizer and BioNTech, and that has also shown positive results at the lower doses.
When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling striking down a Louisiana law that would have limited abortion access in that state, progressives celebrated. Their reasoning on June 29 was simple: By joining the court’s liberal justices, Chief Justice John Roberts had proven his commitment to the principle of precedent.
But the court had also sent several cases – all big wins for abortion rights – back to lower courts for reconsideration.
There is no shortage of abortion cases that might well land at the Supreme Court next – at least 16 are already in the pipeline. Let’s start with the ones that the court just sent back for reconsideration. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals now has to take a second look at its decisions striking down two restrictions in Indiana.
One required abortion providers to show a pregnant woman her ultrasound, let her listen to her fetus’s heartbeat and then wait 18 hours before having an abortion – unless the patientrefused in writing.
The second state law beefed up the restrictions that applied to minors, requiring a judge to notify a young woman’s parents even when a court had already found that abortion would be in her best interests – or that she was mature enough to make her own decision.
Telling the lower court to look again at the case and reach a better result usually means the court was wrong – signaling that the regulations are likely constitutional. It also indicates that Chief Justice Roberts actually relaxed the rules governing abortion restrictions and just made it much easier for states to pass them. But the Indiana cases are not the only ones likely to land at the Supreme Court.
A 1992 protest on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. called for the Supreme Court to preserve women’s right to get an abortion.
Since the court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the ultimate question in abortion cases is whether any particular law unduly burdens a woman’s right to abortion.
Before this most recent decision in June Medical, courts answering that question had to balance the costs and benefits of abortion restrictions. That meant that useless laws often failed challenges in court. In 2016, for example, the court struck down a law requiring abortion clinics to meet the standards set for ambulatory surgical centers.
A Supreme Court majority saw no point to the law. After all, many early abortions required a woman to take pills, not have surgery. And even when a woman did suffer complications after an abortion, that usually happened much later, and well after she had left a clinic. The decision told legislators who wanted to restrict abortion they needed to prove that their laws served a useful purpose.
Roberts changed all that in June Medical. Now, the court will no longer consider whether a law has any benefit. And Roberts seems to have a very different – and much narrower – idea about what a burden is.
That may well mean that it will be harder for women to prove that an abortion restriction – rather than some other force – caused an abortion clinic to close and thereby caused an undue burden. It may mean that the court no longer cares if a woman has to travel hundreds of miles or leave the state to get an abortion, or if she receives a lower quality of care as the result of an existing law. Roberts has seemed skeptical that these burdens cross the line. As the court’s new swing justice, his opinion on the matter will be the one that counts.
The debate about abortion rights is both national and individual, as seen here in Jackson, Mississippi, on March 25, 2020.
In Gonzales, the court claimed that whenever there was scientific uncertainty, lawmakers had more freedom to maneuver. Now, abortion foes use scientific uncertainty to justify much broader restrictions. That leeway could give Roberts the kind of cover he needs to chip away at abortion rights. Rather than ignoring precedent, the court could claim to extend it, all while continuing down a path to eliminating Roe.
Recently, states have bet on laws that bring together abortion politics and explosive questions about racial justice. Mississippi and Tennessee became the latest states to ban abortions based on the fetus’s race, sex or disability. The Supreme Court dodged considering the legality of one of these laws, allowing the issue to percolate longer in the lower courts.
Overturning Roe?
It’s still possible that the court would uphold a far more sweeping ban. Last year, after President Donald Trump seemed to have created a conservative Supreme Court majority, states rushed to pass laws outlawing abortion at the sixth week of pregnancy, when a doctor could detect fetal cardiac activity.
To uphold such a law, the court would have to overturn Roe and Casey, which both prohibit any abortion ban before viability. But red state lawmakers want to force the court to reconsider Roe. Roberts declined to overturn either one in June Medical, but he stressed that no one had asked him to. He might be game if the question comes up directly. And I believe it’s only a matter of time until someone makes a specific request.
June Medical doesn’t look to me like a win for abortion rights. The fate of Roe is more uncertain than ever. In my view, the threats to abortion have hardly diminished, and John Roberts, the deciding vote in June Medical, may well be the one to carry them out.
Article II, section 2 of the Constitution grants the president the power “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment” – which includes reducing or commuting sentences, as well as pardoning people for federal crimes, which can reverse their convictions, or preventing them from being charged in the first place.
All but two presidents in U.S. history have issued pardons – and the two who didn’t were William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, both of whom died after very short times in office.
Trump is not the first president to use the pardon power to remedy what he sees as politically motivated prosecutions of his appointees and allies. But as a former general counsel to the House of Representatives, I believe congressional Democrats can’t investigate the president’s decision or do anything to reverse it.
Pardons and commutations are common
In December 1992, after losing his reelection bid, George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five other officials who had served in the Reagan administration of charges related to the Iran-Contra arms-dealing scandal, in which the U.S. illegally sold weapons to Tehran and sent the proceeds to fund right-wing insurgents in Nicaragua.
In his last days in office, Bill Clinton issued 175 pardons and commutations, including to his half brother, a former business partner and Marc Rich, a wealthy financier who fled the U.S. after being indicted for tax evasion. George W. Bush and Barack Obama also issued pardons and commutations to controversial recipients.
However, most presidents through history, including recently, have focused their pardons on “values and social policy,” White House historian Lindsay Chervinsky told The New York Times. One example of that is Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of former President Richard Nixon, in what he said was an effort to ensure “domestic tranquility,” to heal the nation from the rift of Watergate.
In response to the Stone commutation, Jack Goldsmith, a conservative legal scholar at Harvard Law School and a former official in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, told The New York Times, “This has happened before in a way. But there has been nothing like Trump from a systematic perspective.” He noted that 31 of the 36 pardons and commutations Trump has issued have advanced Trump’s own personal interests or been brought to his attention by celebrities.
The Supreme Court in 1925, with Chief Justice William Howard Taft in the center of the seated row.
In 1925, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, himself a former president, explained the source of the president’s pardon power: “The King of England, before our Revolution, in the exercise of his prerogative, had always exercised his power to pardon … ordinary crime and misdemeanors.” Since at least medieval times in England, the royal prerogative has been a set of powers a monarch can use regardless of opinions or objections from other parts of government. The prerogative is derived from the historic belief in a monarch’s divine right to rule. It includes the power to alter, or reverse, criminal punishments.
That exclusion is so powerful that one Supreme Court ruling declared a pardon “makes [a pardoned person] … a new man.” That 1866 decision came in response to a federal law passed after the Civil War that required anyone who wanted to practice law in federal courts to swear an oath that they had never borne arms against the U.S. nor served in the Confederate government.
In that case, Augustus Hill Garland, a former Confederate senator, had – like many former Confederate officials – received a full pardon from President Andrew Johnson for his participation in any aspect of the rebellion. As a result, the court ruled, he did not need to swear the oath to be allowed to continue his career as an attorney. The pardons could serve the nation, as Johnson had hoped, and help bring the American people back together after the war.
Amid worries that Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence was self-serving, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, New York Democrat Jerry Nadler, has promised to investigate.
But it’s not clear that Congress can actually do that: In early July, the Supreme Court ruled that the power of Congress to investigate extends only as far as its power to enact legislation. Congress can’t limit the president’s power to pardon, so I believe it can’t investigate his use of it, either.
Anti-mask demonstrators derailed Utah County commission meeting about the state mandate requiring schoolchildren to wear face coverings when classes begin.
About 150 parents wearing "Trump 2020" hats and carrying American flags crowded into the small meeting room, pulled tape off seats to mark social distancing space and cheered every time someone mentioned "freedom" or "constitutional rights," reported The Salt Lake Tribune.
“This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing,” said commissioner Tanner Ainge, who then called off the meeting. “We should be physically distancing and wearing masks. This room is not complying with those health guidelines.”
Fellow commissioner Bill Lee had called the meeting to propose a vote on a "compassionate exemption" to Gov. Gary Herbert's statewide school mask mandate, but Ainge said the county didn't have that authority over the school district.
“The fact that we had it on our agenda, we had nothing to do with it,” said Ainge. “That would be like the school board holding a meeting to discuss the appropriate level of funding for the county sheriff’s department.”
Lee walked into the room wearing a mask, but took it off at the crowd's urging, and drew claps and whistles when he said he didn't like government mandates.
The crowd yelled and screamed at counter-protesters outside who were advocating for mask usage as "an act of compassion."
“It’s an act of submission,” one of the protesters yelled. “Jesus gives us a choice, and mandates are against freedom.”
One couple brought their two children to the demonstration, and the protesters screamed at the family for wearing masks.
"Get that mask off that poor little boy," a protester yelled.
Carrie Hall placed her arm around her son to protect him, the newspaper reported, and tried to explain why masks were necessary during a coronavirus pandemic.
“I’d rather wear a tiny piece of cloth than spread COVID,” the seventh-grader added.
One protester walked up to the podium to speak, grabbed a face mask and spit her gum into it.
“It’s garbage,” she shrugged, wadding up the mask. “It doesn’t work anyway. Not for me and not for my kids.”
Outside, protesters carried signs that read “Don’t smother the children” and “Let kids be kids. No masks!”
“This mandate for the children to wear masks is baloney,” said Cynthia Harding inside the meeting room. “We have the right to make our own choices.”
Tammy Barker, who has two school-age children, later told KTVX-TV that she disagreed with the science on masks.
“I want to stand up and be a voice for the children that they don’t have to wear masks back at school,” Barker said. “I think that the science is not there, I think that there’s contradictory information every day.”
As Politico reports, President Donald Trump is facing "a ticking economic time bomb" that could soon destroy what remaining hope he has of winning re-election, as many schools are still not ready to reopen and expanded unemployment benefits are scheduled to run out at the end of the month.
Administration officials have put reopening schools on the front burner, as they view it as key to getting parents to feel comfortable returning to work.
However, some administration officials tell Politico that it's already way too late to push for schools to reopen, and the reality is many of them won't be ready.
"Some senior aides think the White House became invested in the school issue too late after focusing throughout the spring on reopening restaurants, bars and small businesses across states -- when schools should have been their first priority," the publication writes.
Added to this, many of Trump's economic advisers are telling him not to renew expanded unemployment insurance, which could give unemployed workers far less cash to spend, thus putting the economy in further jeopardy.
“You’ve got to take the $600 a week off the table and go back to the traditional unemployment system,” said economic adviser Stephen Moore. “You can’t keep paying people not to work.”
During an MSNBC "Morning Joe' segment on the upcoming Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, political analyst Elise Jordan explained that the Republican Party is being forced to "cater to the whims" of Donald Trump as if he were an angry "toddler" while at the same time trying to protect attendees from COVID-19 exposure.
As host Mika Brezinski noted, the RNC is now scrambling and instituting measures in Florida to slow the possible spread of the deadly coronavirus -- including new rules limiting the number guests allowed -- instead of canceling the event that had been moved from North Carolina.
"Now Florida is a complete hot spot so they want to have a super spreader event in a hot spot," the MSNBC host explained. "I say super spreader event, let me explain what I mean. Do you really think the president of the United States, this president, President Trump, is going to want a smattering of people around when he gets up to make his speech or is he going to want a roaring crowd? I can tell you right now he's not putting up with people socially distanced and not many of them he just won't do it. He'll freak out."
"Mika, it's almost like giving in to a toddler with his plans with this half-baked scheme about this convention," Jordan offered. "It's almost like maybe if some adults had shown leadership and said, maybe a convention in Jacksonville, Florida outdoors in the dead heat of August, which I don't know about you, but I sure wouldn't want to be sitting outside at that kind of event in Florida in August."
"Maybe it's not such a good idea, maybe we have to realistically assess the situation at hand using science," she continued. "But no, instead, you see how the RNC catered to Donald Trump's whims. And it's going to cost them a lot of money. They're having to essentially put on two conventions right now and neither of them are going to be what the man-child desires."
