Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on April 29. Pompeo criticized the World Health Organization on Monday for not inviting Taiwan to its assembly.
Andrew Harnik/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Andrew Harnik/AP
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on April 29. Pompeo criticized the World Health Organization on Monday for not inviting Taiwan to its assembly.
Andrew Harnik/AP
Updated at 9:41 p.m. ET
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday blasted the head of the World Health Organization for bowing to Chinese pressure and not inviting Taiwan to attend the body’s annual meeting, damaging its credibility at a crucial time.
The World Health Assembly started on Monday amid the worst pandemic in modern history.
Taiwan has won worldwide plaudits for its deft handling of the coronavirus, despite close links to China, where the disease first emerged. The self-ruled island has reported just 440 confirmed cases and seven virus-related deaths.
But since it is not a United Nations member, Taiwan required an invitation to attend the assembly as an observer — which was not forthcoming, despite a strong push in recent weeks with backing from the United States, Japan, New Zealand and others.
The Chinese government in Beijing considers Taiwan a province of China and says the central government represents the island’s interests sufficiently in the WHO.
Pompeo said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had the legal power and precedent to include it this year.
“Yet, he instead chose not to invite Taiwan under pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Director-General’s lack of independence deprives the Assembly of Taiwan’s renowned scientific expertise on pandemic disease, and further damages the WHO’s credibility and effectiveness at a time when the world needs it the most,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Taiwan attended the health assembly as an observer from 2009 to 2016, when relations with China were warmer.
In a statement on Monday, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu expressed “deep regret and strong dissatisfaction that the World Health Organization Secretariat has yielded to pressure from the Chinese government.”
Taiwan had decided to drop the issue for now, but Wu said it would follow up later in the year on a proposal submitted to the WHO by its diplomatic allies to review the island democracy’s status in light of its handling of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Wu said Taiwan will continue to provide “big-hearted” assistance to others, donating millions of masks and other medical equipment.
A handful of WHA delegates advocated Taiwan’s participation in remarks during the proceedings on Monday.
China’s Permanent Representative to the UN office in Geneva, Chen Xu, said such comments “seriously violated” relevant UN resolutions and “undermined the global solidarity against the pandemic.”
“China strongly protests and firmly opposes this behavior,” he said through a translator. “The Taiwan authorities refused to accept the ‘one China’ principle. As a result, the political basis for its participation in the WHA no longer exists.”
Later on Monday night, the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, released a statement that linked Mr. Trump’s decision to take the drug to the “support staff” who tested positive for the virus, an apparent reference to the president’s personal valet. “After numerous discussions he and I had regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks,” Dr. Conley said. He also said the president “is in very good health and has remained symptom free.”
Donald Trump has told reporters at the White House that for “a couple weeks” he has been taking a malaria drug as a defense against Covid-19 – despite warnings from his administration that it is dangerous.
Trump said he was taking hydroxychloroquine – a drug approved to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis – in response to the coronavirus threat.
But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been warning since April that the drug should not be used for that purpose because it could cause irregular heartbeats and other cardiac trauma.
The drug is not approved as a treatment for Covid-19 and Trump has not been diagnosed with the disease, to public knowledge.
Trump’s claim to be taking the drug was made as he attacked an administration whistleblower who went before Congress last week and described internal pressure to endorse the drug as an effective coronavirus treatment.
The whistleblower, Rick Bright, was the former director of a federal agency in charge of vaccines.
On Monday, Trump called Bright a hypocrite and then riffed on the supposed benefits of the drug, which the FDA advised has “not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing Covid-19”.
“You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it … The front line workers many many are taking it,” Trump said.
“I happen to be taking it. I happen to be taking it. I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah. A couple weeks ago I started taking it. Because I think it’s good, I heard a lot of good stories… I take a pill every day.”
Previously, Trump had endorsed the injection of disinfectants or light into the body to fight coronavirus – recommendations that were followed by a spike in calls to poison control centers.
But Trump had never before claimed to be trying one of the home remedies himself.
A string of studies around the world have suggested that hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine do little to prevent or treat Covid-19, and the FDA has cautioned against the use of either drug for Covid-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial “due to risk of heart rhythm problems”.
The drugs “can cause abnormal heart rhythms such as QT interval prolongation and a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,” the FDA said.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease doctor and a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, has repeatedly warned that there is no conclusive evidence to support using the drug.
The United States passed two grim milestones for coronavirus cases on Monday, surpassing 1.5m confirmed cases and 90,000 deaths, according to numbers recorded by Johns Hopkins University.
Trump touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment in March, a claim that was amplified for weeks on Fox News. But alarming reports in April about the health risks tied to the drug silenced that talk until the Bright episode.
Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, told Congress last week that he was removed from his post after resisting pressure by the administration to make “potentially harmful drugs widely available”, including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
The FDA has issued repeated warnings about the dangers of the drugs in question.
“While clinical trials are ongoing to determine the safety and effectiveness of these drugs for Covid-19, there are known side effects of these medications that should be considered FDA commissioner Stephen M Hahn said in a statement issued in late April. “The FDA will continue to monitor and investigate these potential risks and will communicate publicly when more information is available.”
WASHINGTON – A bipartisan congressional panel is questioning why the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have loaned out little of the $500 billion designated in a recent spending bill for economic relief from the novel coronavirus.
The Congressional Oversight Commission was created as part of the $2 trillion package that Congress approved to help individuals, businesses and local governments weather the economic catastrophe from the virus.
The day before Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is scheduled to testify in the Senate, the commission reported that none of the $46 billion set aside for loans to airlines and other businesses critical to national security has been disbursed yet.
Of the remaining $454 billion available for emergency lending, the commission found that Treasury had disbursed only $37.5 billion to the Federal Reserve’s Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility for supporting corporate bonds.
“What are the Treasury and the Fed doing with $500 billion of taxpayer money?” the report asked. “Who is that money helping?”
The Treasury Department didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
The commission lacks a chairman, who must be appointed jointly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
But four members of the commission – Reps. French Hill, R-Ark., and Donna Shalala, D-Fla.; Bharat Ramamurti, a managing director for corporate power at the Roosevelt Institute and former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. – released the 17-page report largely outlining questions to gauge how the $500 billion is being used. Warren and Toomey each sit on the Banking Committee.
“We aim to get answers to these and other questions in the report,” Ramamurti said Monday in a tweet, with the next report expected in mid-June.
The commission noted that the relief legislation came during the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The Labor Department reported 20 million unemployment claims in April, as the unemployment rate rose to 14.7%. Retails sales fell $46 billion in March and nearly $80 billion in April.
The $500 billion that the commission focused on is intended for loans to “eligible businesses, states, and municipalities related to losses incurred as a result of coronavirus.”
The Main Street Lending Program is intended to help businesses with up to 10,000 workers or $2.5 billion in annual revenue
The Municipal Lending Facility is intended to help states and counties with more than 500,000 residents and cities with more than 250,000 residents.
The Primary and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities are intended to support businesses by buying corporate bonds or syndicated loans.
The oversight commission and members of the Banking Committee will be asking how to gauge whether the program is a success.
“How will the Treasury and the Fed assess the success or failure of this program?” the report asked.
As part of the House bill passed on Friday to deliver relief to a battered economy, people with student debt would get some more elbow room.
The U.S. Department of Education has already announced that due to the pandemic, federal student loan borrowers don’t need to make payments on their loans until at least October. And during that time, no interest will accrue.
Economically distressed borrowers and those with private student loans would also be eligible for $10,000 in debt forgiveness.
Higher-education expert Mark Kantrowitz said he expects few of the bill’s provisions to pass the Senate. “Republicans do not like loan forgiveness,” he said, adding that the extension of the payment pause could find bipartisan support.
Meanwhile, consumer advocates bemoaned the fact that the debt forgiveness in the HEROES Act wouldn’t be offered to all student loan borrowers.
“Many borrowers — especially low-income borrowers, borrowers of color and those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic — will still be burdened with historically high student loan debt and will face a potentially devastated economy when they start making payments again,” said Persis Yu, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center.
“Their student loan payments will likely prevent them from recovering and contributing to rebuilding our economy.”
The seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic is evident, particularly in the US, where the death toll is approaching 100,000. This reality, however, is not consistently reflected by President Donald Trump in his public remarks — and increasingly, Fox News’s Covid-19 coverage has begun to revert to the dangerously flippant tone it had in February and early March, when numerous anchors on America’s top-rated cable network characterized the situation as a “hoax” or “scam” being sensationalized by Democrats to hurt Trump.
This can be seen in the lack of coverage the coronavirus has gotten in a number of the network’s top-rated shows recently — as I’ve detailed, the public health crisis has started to take a back seat to the bogus “Obamagate” conspiracy theory — but also in how coverage of Covid-19 has been framed.
For instance, during an appearance on Jeanine Pirro’s Saturday night Fox News show, Eric Trump accused Democrats of conspiring to make a big deal out of the coronavirus — all so his dad won’t be able to hold rallies before November’s election.
“They think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is being able to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every single time,” Eric Trump began. “You watch — they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3. And guess what? After November 3, coronavirus will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen. They’re trying to deprive him of his greatest asset.”
Instead of pushing back on Trump’s claim, Pirro echoed Trump’s conspiratorial mode of thinking by suggesting Democrats are using the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to expand mail-in voting and thereby steal elections from Republicans. (Never mind that the only evidence of large-scale mail-in election fraud occurring in recent history happened in 2018 on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina.)
“There’s a picture that should’ve been used of people in line at Walmart — we’ve all been there, Home Depot — you’re six feet away. You could do the same thing to vote,” Pirro said. “It’s a fear that’s being instilled. Are people buying it, though?”
This exchange came the same weekend that the US’s official coronavirus death toll surpassed 90,000, and as other countries that haven’t been hit nearly as hard continue to curtail large public gatherings. If there is a conspiracy to use the coronavirus to prevent Trump to hold rallies, it is apparently international.
Of course, there are straightforward reasons holding Trump rallies right now would be a bad idea. Coronavirus can be spread by asymptomatic people, and if even one such carrier were to attend such a gathering, it could turn into a “superspreader” event.
Nonpartisan experts within Trump’s government recognize this reality and have advised against large gatherings. Eric Trump and Pirro, however, opted for wild conspiracy theories aimed at weaponizing the pandemic against the president’s perceived political foes.
Fox News’s coronavirus coverage is taking cues from Trump — and so the network is back to conspiracy theories
The Pirro-Eric Trump exchange reflects how Fox News has echoed President Trump’s coronavirus rhetoric and changed its approach to its coverage to support the president’s messaging du jour.
From January through early March, Fox News hosts were downplaying the threat Covid-19 posed, running segments dismissing it as a “hoax” and less deadly than the flu. Of course, at that time, Trump was also downplaying the coronavirus. To cite a couple of notorious examples, he vowed on February 27 that the virus would go away on its own “like a miracle” without any Americans dying; then at a rally the next day, he dismissed Democratic criticisms of his administration’s response as “their new hoax.”
But in mid-March, as it became clear that the virus had already spread across the country and draconian measures would be needed to prevent as many as 2.2 million Americans from dying, Trump’s tone changed. Fox News changed along with him — the network even went as far as to fire anchor Trish Regan following her widely criticized monologue about the “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam.”
HANNITY, March 9: “This scaring the living hell out of people — I see it, again, as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”
HANNITY, March 18: “By the way, this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously. We’ve never called the virus a hoax.” pic.twitter.com/yLKpojA7BI
Trump has now swung back in the other direction. Even without the per-day number of cases and deaths yet showing a clear downward trend, he’s urging states to ignore the guidance provided by his administration’s coronavirus task force and open businesses in time to resuscitate the economy ahead of November’s election.
So now, Fox News and Trumpworld are basically back where they started — dismissing the coronavirus as a hoax that Democrats are weaponizing against Trump. The big difference this time around is they now have more than 90,000 reasons to know better.
Support Vox’s explanatory journalism
Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.
Here’s what the plan says about each of these sectors.
Higher education
– In the middle of the spring semester, colleges and universities closed their physical locations and moved to remote learning as the pandemic began sweeping the state. During his press conference Monday, Baker was asked if campuses could expect to physically welcome students back to campus in the fall. His answer revealed that officials were still formulating a plan on how to approach the fall semester.
Advertisement
“The conversation about the fall — the discussion there is ongoing,” Baker said. “I would expect that to get resolved at some point over the course of the next four or five weeks, but that hasn’t been answered yet.”
– The reopening plan says that colleges and universities are working together and with the state to “ensure a safe and gradual return to campus life,” and said that in the upcoming weeks, institutions will develop their own customized reopening plans for each of the state’s phases.
– During phase one, which stretches from now through June 8 at the earliest, colleges can begin restarting some in-person functions. Institutions can repopulate research laboratories and medical, dental, veterinary, and allied health clinical education and services, and perform work necessary to prepare campuses to reopen. (All activities must observe social distancing guidance.)
– During phases two and three, each institution will develop its own plans for course delivery, which will likely involve a combination of in-person and remote learning to allow for social distancing on campus.
Advertisement
K-12 schools
– As previously announced, schools will stay physically closed through the end of the academic year, with remote lessons taking place. However, there is the potential for limited exceptions to be announced at a later date, according to the reopening plan, although specifics were not noted in Monday’s plan.
– Schools can continue offering essential noneducational services, such as take-out and food delivery to students and families.
– When it comes to the key piece almost everyone is waiting for — what learning will look like in the fall — the information provided is a bit of a letdown. The reopening document says plans for the 2020-21 school year are still in progress and will be announced soon. “We are developing plans for summer learning programs and the next school year and closely tracing the progression of the virus as part of the reopening process,” the plan says. The administration did not provide a timetable for when that future guidance would be coming.
Child care/day care and summer camps
– Child care — which was ordered by Baker to remain closed until the end of June — and summer recreation camps will reopen in a phased approach. The state education and public health departments are still developing exact guidelines, which aim to balance families’ needs with heath and safety.
– The initial reopening plan will “focus on families who have no safe alternative to group care by increasing emergency child care capacity.” No further specifics were provided.
Advertisement
– In the state’s phase two, which at the very earliest would be June 8, recreational day camps would be able to open.
– In phase three, which would be June 29 at the earliest, residential summer camps would be able to open.
– Unfortunately, that’s about all that’s been released so far. The state is expected to release more detailed guidelines on child care in the coming weeks.
Abraham Pinedo, a state worker, describes how a pay cut will affect his life Thursday, May 14, 2020, in Sacramento. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting state worker pay by 10 percent to address a deficit caused by the coronavirus.
Democratic strategist Robert Patillo and Trump 2020 advisory board member Jason Meister debate.
EXCLUSIVE: Taking aim at Joe Biden, President Trump’s reelection team on Monday launched a faux “investigative” series that mocks the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee by spotlighting his numerous verbal miscues on the campaign trail.
The video series by the Trump campaign is titled “Truth over Facts,” a phrase the former vice president used last August in Des Moines as he flubbed a line during a speech at the Iowa State Fair.
The Trump campaign – which gave Fox News a first look at the video – spotlighted that it’s “aimed at uncovering the truth behind Joe Biden’s never-ending, seemingly incomprehensible statements during his third, plodding campaign for president.”
The video – made to look like a television investigative report – is hosted by Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh, who’s a former local TV anchor and reporter.
“The American people deserve to know the truth behind Joe Biden’s delirious and nonsensical claims on the campaign trail,” Murtaugh said. “When he’s mangling the text of the Declaration of Independence or calling someone a ‘lying, dog-faced pony soldier,’ is he really speaking a language that only he and a select group of others understand?”
The 77-year-old Biden has a long history of stumbling over his words. Biden, though, opened up in February about his lifelong struggle to overcome stuttering, and his defenders have argued that this sometimes may be a factor in his widely publicized gaffes.
The “Truth over Facts” videos – and an accompanying website – appear to be the latest effort by the Trump campaign to raise doubts about Biden’s cognitive ability. The president’s long called Biden “Sleepy Joe,” in an attempt to raise doubts about his opponent’s physical condition and fitness for office.
The president, who’s 73, has had his own fair share of verbal miscues, embellished statements and Twitter typos.
Biden, in an interview with Snapchat that was posted last week in Vanity Fair, said that “Trump is a master at laying nicknames on people,” but added that, “I can hardly wait to get onto the stage with Donald Trump.”
The former vice president stressed that “in terms of energy … I don’t have any problem comparing my energy level to Donald Trump who I’m really resisting giving a nickname to.”
The newest coronavirus relief bill, titled the HEROES Act, calls for another round of stimulus checks for Americans, but it still has to clear the Senate and get President Donald Trump’s stamp of approval.
The House of Representatives passed the $3 trillion piece of legislation aimed at providing financial relief for people and businesses impacted by the pandemic on Friday. Its narrow passage of 208 votes in favor to 199 against indicates the uphill battle it may face in a Republican-controlled Senate and at the desk of a president who has called it “dead on arrival.” It is not expected to pass in its current form.
Like the first stimulus package, the CARES Act, the HEROES Act calls for economic impact payments of $1,200 for individuals. To receive the full amount, an individual must have an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less or $150,000 or less if two people are filing a joint return.
An additional $1,200 would be allocated for dependents—up to $3,600—and the bill caps payments at $6,000 per household. Under the HEROES Act, undocumented immigrants who weren’t eligible for relief in the CARES Act would retroactively receive the $1,200 payment.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi unveiled the relief package on Tuesday and called for people to have empathy for those who may be unable to pay rent or feed their families. More than 36 million people have filed for unemployment since the middle of March. At the time of Pelosi’s remarks, the current report was 33 million unemployment claims, a number she called “almost unimaginable.”
“This is not only necessary to their survival but it is also a stimulus to this economy,” Pelosi said. “We all know that we must put more money into the pockets of the American people.”
Economic impact payments received bipartisan support the first time around and Trump has expressed support for a possible second round of checks. However, the HEROES Act has faced pushback from Senate Republicans, some of whom say legislators should wait to see the full economic impact of previous stimulus bills before moving forward with the new one.
Legislators have also targeted parts of the bill that are unlikely to get Republican support and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the House Democrats’ bill for being a “seasonal catalog of left-wing oddities” masquerading as a coronavirus relief bill.
Only one Republican, Representative Peter King of New York, who is not running for reelection when his term is up in November, voted in favor of the House bill. Ahead of the vote, he told Fox News that he didn’t agree with everything in the bill but his only choice was to vote in favor of it because his state needs financial help.
“I can be as much a red state person as anyone. But now we’re talking about survival. And this is no place for politics. There’s a lot in the bill that I disagree with, but Mitch McConnell refuses to bring up aid to state and local governments. New York will absolutely collapse if that aid money is not there,” King said.
King said he voted for it “reluctantly,” adding that passing the bill would give Republicans in the Senate an opportunity to “work with something” and strip out what they “believe doesn’t belong there.” If there is a vote in the Senate, Republican senators said it likely won’t happen until after the Memorial Day recess.
“That was never going to be the backbone of testing in the U.S.,” said Azar.
Public health experts said the CDC’s early testing problems allowed the novel virus to spread in the country undetected during a critical time when it could have been contained. But many high-ranking Trump officials have played down that failure, saying the CDC played a limited role in expanding test capacity. The FDA, meanwhile, was also criticized for acting too slow to approve diagnostic tests from private companies early in the outbreak.
Azar on Monday said only private companies could have marshaled the resources necessary to produce millions of tests.
“The private sector brings that to bear,” said Azar. “That’s not the CDC.“
President Donald Trump will participate in a May 18 roundtable featuring executives and leaders from the restaurant industry. Read more: https://wapo.st/2WH0uj5. SPECIAL OFFER: To thank you for your support, here’s a deal on a Washington Post digital subscription: $29 for one year http://washingtonpost.com/youtubeoffer.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday his country will provide $2 billion over two years to help other countries respond to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The leader of the world’s second-largest economy, where the disease known as Covid-19 emerged late last year, was speaking via video conferencing at the opening ceremony of a key World Health Organization meeting.
“China will provide 2 billion U.S dollars over two years to help with Covid-19 response, and with economic and social development in affected countries, especially developing countries,“ Xi said, according to an official English translation.
Xi added that when a vaccine for the disease is available, it “will be made a global public good.” Some Chinese companies are at the forefront of development and testing for a Covid-19 vaccine.
The 73rd World Health Assembly, whose annual gathering kicked off Monday, is a decision-making body of the WHO, which is the United Nations’ specialized global health agency. The meeting of 194 members typically occurs in Geneva, Switzerland, where delegates agree upon the organization’s leadership, priorities and budget. This year, due to the coronavirus, the shortened session is set to run virtually between Monday and Tuesday.
With the world turned upside down by the novel coronavirus, Joe Biden has refashioned his presidential campaign to shift from an emphasis on steadiness and stability to the promise of big, bold change.
While the fundamentals of Biden’s White House bid remain the same — with a call for such Democratic standbys as expanded healthcare and greater equality — he talks less about restoring things as they were before President Trump’s disruptive time in office and more about where the country heads from this unsettling place.
The more transformative vision is a response to the greatest economic and health crises most Americans have ever faced and the way the toll of COVID-19 has changed public attitudes and opened the door to new political possibilities.
“You don’t have a once-in-a-century pandemic wreaking both the human devastation and economic devastation that COVID-19 has wrought without producing new thinking about what’s required — not just bringing this country back but, as the VP likes to say, build back better,” said Jake Sullivan, a senior campaign advisor.
In the coming weeks, Biden said, he will lay out his plan for the “right kind of economic recovery,” which campaign aides say will include boosting the so-called “caring economy” of child care, nursing and healthcare aides; pouring major investments into public health infrastructure; expanding the domestic production of critical medical and protective equipment; and ushering in a new era of corporate responsibility for the private sector, which, Biden pointedly notes, has been bailed out twice in 12 years.
The forcefully populist messaging could help Biden in two ways: sharpening the contrast with Trump, who still holds an edge with voters on economic issues, and attracting those progressives who may still be smarting over his defeat of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic nominating contest.
Biden’s approach in the primaries — offering himself as a keeper of the liberal faith but one more pragmatic and electable than Sanders or Warren — was a winning strategy in the time before the pandemic. Now, he echoes some of their grander rhetorical flourishes, pledging to “transform the country” and “change the system.”
There are signs that the toll of the coronavirus crisis — with nearly 90,000 Americans dead so far and roughly 36 million unemployed — has so rattled the electorate that broad segments may be open to a more expansive government.
A recent poll from Navigator Research, a progressive group that does daily coronavirus-related surveys, found that 50% of Americans said the federal government should be doing more to improve the economy. A late April poll by the liberal Groundwork Collaborative found roughly 70% of respondents backed “major, sweeping action” by the government to address the pandemic’s economic impact.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Poll has similarly found high support for government coronavirus aid across party lines, a notable contrast from the polarized views of the 2009 stimulus package adopted amid the Great Recession.
There is a risk, however, that Biden could overreach in a time when voters may crave a reassuringly even-keeled approach more than massive changes.
“I’d be a little careful,” said Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist who helped put Bill Clinton in the White House. “I think voters are a little skeptical of grandiose plans to remake everything. His party rejected the revolution and chose reconciliation. I think that’s why Joe beat Bernie.”
Advisors to the former vice president said Biden first began thinking of how the virus would require a more sweeping policy approach in March, soon after stay-at-home orders went into effect across the country.
By early April, he was telegraphing the scope of his expanded thinking, musing in a CNN interview that the economic ruin could equal or eclipse what President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced in navigating the Great Depression. In an interview last month with Politico, he called for a new stimulus bill that was “a hell of a lot bigger” than the $2-trillion package passed by Congress.
Campaign aides are quick to say that Biden’s statements mark an evolution, not a revolution, in his thinking. From the start of the campaign, Biden’s platform, which included calls for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and $1.7-trillion plan to combat climate change, was more progressive than any Democratic nominee before him.
“It’s not so much about the fundamental principles of what he’s proposing being different. Or looking at this crisis and saying, ‘We have to throw out the policy playbook I’ve been working from and start a new one,’” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager. “It’s about scaling up to meet this moment.”
In response to the coronavirus, Biden has so far called for canceling at least $10,000 of student loan debt per person during the crisis and increasing Social Security payments by $200 per month — notions that were originally promoted by Massachusetts Sen. Warren.
Those initiatives came on the heels of his steps immediately after locking up the nomination to adopt Warren’s bankruptcy reform proposal. He also proposed lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60 and offering tuition-free public college for many students, steps in the direction of Vermont Sen. Sanders’ signature policies.
The steady embrace of his rivals’ policies is a sign that Biden is offering more than just a “hat tip” to the left, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
“The good news is that so many progressive solutions where there’s a lot of enthusiasm among voters happen to be the solutions that meet the moment with this coronavirus crisis,” Green said, “so it creates a win-win for Biden to both be the president people want and unify the party by bringing progressives over.”
Still, some on the left say they’ll need to see more. Ben Tulchin, a top advisor in Sanders’ two presidential campaigns, said Biden’s hints of a New Deal-style presidency are “encouraging” but incomplete.
“He’s just got to follow through … on big and bold policies, which he hasn’t done yet,” Tulchin said. “It will require retooling what he did in the primary, because in the primary it was about pushing back on Bernie’s big, bold policy proposals.”
Biden formalized those overtures to the left last week when he announced “unity” policy task forces that consist of Biden and Sanders allies, including some of the latter’s most vocal backers, such as Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state.
The Republican National Committee quickly seized on the alliance, painting Biden as a Sanders-esque revolutionary.
“Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are two sides of the same socialist coin,” said Steve Guest, a party spokesman. “Now with his full embrace of AOC’s radicalism, Biden is the bannerman for the socialist agenda.”
Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, has stepped up its attacks on Trump’s handling of the pandemic’s economic fallout, charging that the administration’s efforts to aid businesses have favored the well-off and well-connected over small business owners. Biden and Warren co-wrote an op-ed blasting Trump for shrugging off oversight requirements for coronavirus aid.
“Obviously, this new crisis gives [Biden] and his campaign an opportunity to reassess and reevaluate, and he can say that in earnestness,” Tulchin said.“He doesn’t have to apologize for shifting gears because the world has changed.”
WASHINGTON — The State Department inspector general who was removed from his job Friday was looking into whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a staffer walk his dog, pick up his dry cleaning and make dinner reservations for Pompeo and his wife, among other personal errands, according to two congressional officials assigned to different committees.
The officials said they are working to learn whether former Inspector General Steve Linick may have had other ongoing investigations into Pompeo.
The officials say the staffer who was alleged to have been made to do personal tasks is a political appointee who was serving as a staff assistant. CNN reported last year that congressional Democrats were investigating a different complaint, this one from a whistleblower, alleging that Pompeo’s diplomatic security agents were made to perform similar personal tasks.
The House first obtained details of the inspector general investigation late last week after learning of Linick’s sudden removal. Congressional oversight officials investigating the matter believe the firing was direct retaliation for his pursuing the investigation.
The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
In a letter Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Trump said it was “vital” to have “the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General.”
“That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General,” the letter said.
Linick’s removal drew criticism from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a co-chair of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, who said Congress needs written reasons justifying a removal. “A general lack of confidence is simply not sufficient,” he said.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday that they’re launching an investigation of Linick’s removal. They asked the Trump administration to turn over records and other details related to the firing by Friday.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has also fired the intelligence community’s watchdog, Michael Atkinson, and replaced acting Inspector General Glenn Fine at the Defense Department.
President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., tweeted and Instagrammed a reference to the widespread “Creepy Joe” meme on Friday — one labeling former Vice President Joe Biden a pedophile.
The meme, which has been circulating online in right-wing meme forums as well as communities and hashtags devoted to the “Creepy Joe” meme, highlights the fact a number of women have said the presumptive nominee touched them inappropriately. It depicts Biden saying, “See you later alligator,” with an alligator responding, “In a while, pedophile.” On Instagram, Trump, Jr. initially framed the meme as a joke, and later repeated the claim on Twitter.
But even as he insisted that he was joking, Trump, Jr. pushed the idea further, commenting that the Democratic presidential candidate should “stop the unwanted touching and keep his hands to himself,” comparing Biden’s public appearances with children to his heavily criticizedinteractions with women.
There is, of course, no evidence anywhere that Joe Biden has ever had inappropriate contact with children. But that hasn’t stopped the “Creepy Joe” meme from proliferating all over the internet, as a nagging but persistent thorn in the side of Biden’s campaign.
Accusations of pedophilia against Biden are entirely unfounded — but the meme that encompasses them is everywhere
The “Creepy Joe” meme was born out of media images of Biden apparently standing much too close to a litany of women at public appearances. Such images have floated through the media for years, usually framed as jokes.
In 2019, several women came forward to say they felt Biden’s behavior was nonconsensual. However, one woman depicted in the memes, Stephanie Carter, has objected to the meming of the photo she appeared in, writing in March 2019 that “The Joe Biden in my picture is a close friend helping someone get through a big day, for which I will always be grateful. So, as the sole owner of my story, it is high time that I reclaim it – from strangers, Twitter, the pundits and the late-night hosts.”
This is all a stark contrast to the caricature of Biden that dominated the internet during the Obama administration: that of a fun-loving, relatable sidekick. But even as Biden’s campaign has remained focused on drafting policies and building coalitions, the “Creepy Joe” caricature has only grown stronger over the months. Trump, Jr. didn’t have to look hard to find a handy example of the meme: they’re everywhere. The image he used in his follow-up tweet, for instance, has been circulating broadly since at least 2018.
For his part, Trump, Jr. has constantly joked about Biden’s unfitness for president on his social media, with most of his cracks taking aim at Biden’s alleged senility or lack of intellect. He has also referenced the “Creepy Joe” meme a number of times, as recently as a month ago:
Of course, there’s a huge leap from “hair-sniffing” to “child molester” or even “inappropriate behavior” to “child molester” — at least there should be. But in a world where the “creepy uncle” stereotype, in which an older man can’t help but engage in socially unacceptable behavior, is one we have been conditioned to accept (and make light of), that leap becomes an easier one for Trump, Jr. to make. And the image the president’s son used — just one of a cavalcade of “Creepy Joe” memes — uses that conditioning to make its assertions seem at least possible to casual observers, if not true.
It shouldn’t be necessary to say that it’s unconscionable for a member of the sitting president’s family to make such a grim assertion about a presidential candidate without any evidence whatsoever, even as a joke. But the truth is that we’re well past the point at which such flagrant accusations make a dent in a media cycle that’s constantly inundated with President Trump’s anger and attacks on his opponents, especially given that studies have found Trump fans don’t care that such accusations aren’t true.
In fact, in the strange disinformation-saturated culture of 2020, it’s not only useless to say that the meme isn’t true — it’s probably perversely useful. That’s because Trump, Jr. has a history of sharing such memes, serving as “dad’s ambassador to the fringe.”
And on the fringe, ideas that initially read as false tend to attract true believers.
Trump, Jr. uses the familiar tactic of “just joking” to help damaging extremist memes spread in all seriousness
Trump, Jr. used a tactic often seen at the beginning of a false idea’s adoption by fringe groups, particularly extremists.
Facing backlash over the meme, the president’s son claimed he was “joking” while semi-seriously promoting preposterous and unfounded ideas. This echoes the strategies of the right-wing extremists and white supremacists whose content he routinely amplifies, some of which are ultimately amplified by President Trump himself. Perhaps nowhere is this technique seen as often as with the spreading of racist memes and conspiracies — it has long been the cornerstone of the alt-right playbook. The strategy is essentially a three-step process:
The meme initially circulates as a “joke”
The public gets distracted, angry, upset, curious, and generally confused or sidetracked as people debate the intent behind the meme
This public furor helps the meme to spread, in turn spreading awareness of the serious message the joke never really concealed to begin with.
That might sound brazen and overly simple, but it’s proven an effective tactic to spread everything from genocidal white supremacy to actual neo-Nazi propaganda. As one neo-Nazi YouTuber bluntly put it when asked how to convert people to his ideology: “Pretend to joke about it until the punchline /really/ lands.”
It’s tempting to assume Trump, Jr. was just making a joke and that anything beyond that is an overreaction — but that’s exactly the purpose of memes like these, and exactly the type of dismissal that allows them to foment public reaction and spread further. It doesn’t help that Instagram itself, where Trump, Jr. initially posted, has evolved into a platform where extremist memes proliferate.
Trump, Jr. chose to drop the “pedophile” meme just days after the New York Times reported that President Trump’s staff is worried about his dwindling support among voters over 65. And while it’s unlikely that voters over 65 are checking Instagram for dank memes, it is possible that a completely unfounded meme that begins as a “joke” could evolve into a conspiracy theory, one that could get enough attention to warrant serious “debate” from platforms senior voters do pay attention to, like Fox News. After all, we’ve seen such conspiracies get mainstream air timebefore — and by “before” I mean just last week, when the nonsensical conspiracy theory “Obamagate” became a topic of discussion.
So, whether or not Trump, Jr. was really joking, his sharing of the “pedophile” meme could give the idea a push into the mainstream right, despite being unfounded. With so much on the line in an unprecedented election year, even a totally baseless accusation like this against the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate is a messy, nasty complication that could derail more salient topics along the campaign trail.
After all, President Trump is still amplifying social media that promotes Pizzagate, the false pedophile conspiracy against his 2016 opponent which, along with innumerable similar extremist memes, arguably helped him win the election.
Given how well that strategy turned out for the president, it’s highly unlikely he’ll let a false pedophilia accusation against his 2020 opponent go to waste.
Support Vox’s explanatory journalism
Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that his country will provide $2 billion over two years to help other countries respond to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The leader of the world’s second-largest economy, where the disease known as Covid-19 emerged late last year, was speaking via video conferencing at the opening ceremony of a key World Health Organization meeting.
“China will provide $2 billion U.S dollars over two years to help with Covid-19 response, and with economic and social development in affected countries, especially developing countries,“ Xi said, via an official English translation.
Xi added that when a vaccine for the disease is available, it “will be made a global public good.” Some Chinese companies are at the forefront of development and testing for a Covid-19 vaccine.
The 73rd World Health Assembly, whose annual gathering kicked off Monday, is a decision-making body of the WHO, which is the United Nations’ specialized global health agency. The meeting of 194 members of the WHO typically occurs in Geneva, Switzerland, where delegates agree upon the organization’s leadership, priorities and budget. This year, due to the coronavirus, the shortened session is set to run virtually between Monday and Tuesday.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
