- Rep. Ratcliffe, Trump’s nomination to be DNI, follows several conspiracy theorists on Twitter ranging from the newer Q-anon/Pizzagate type to 9/11 Truthers. He is in line to be in the most sensitive intelligence position on the planet. His name was previously withdrawn after it was proven that he had lied about all of his intelligence experience.
- An internal White House model, now accounting for states opening despite not meeting the guidelines for doing so, projects 200,000 new cases per day and 3,000 deaths from Covid-19 beginning June 1. The White House instead prefers to use the model developed by economic adviser Kevin Hassett which predicts deaths will drop near zero in the next ten days. Hassett is infamous in economics circles as he predicted the stock market would shoot upwards shortly before the dotcom market crash. Hassett’s model is taking periodic reporting trends and expanding them into the future. Statistically, this is garbage.
- Trump’s Town Hall held in the rotunda of the Lincoln Memorial was illegal. Events are banned by federal law from being held there. The Secretary of the Interior made a special exception because of the “extraordinary crisis” the country is dealing with.
- Andy Slavitt is a former federal health care official (CMS administrator). He has a great thread about modeling and how the Trump administration has used it to downplay the severity of the outbreak. https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1257477460519763969
- The president is now openly saying that members of his administration may testify before the Senate and not the House solely because Republicans control the former and Democrats control the latter.
- In a rant over a campaign ad, the president called George Conway a “deranged loser” and “Moonface.” (There are several people saying the latter is a racial slur, but I have found no evidence of this.) Notably, Conway is married to Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway. There is not a company in the country which would allow an employee to publicly act this way.
- The president is planning to wind down the Covid-19 task force at the end of the month. There are currently zero states which have met the requirements for easing restrictions. New York is the only state which has passed its peak infection number. The virus is still spreading in the rest of the country.
- Rick Bright, who was removed from a federal health agency over his criticism of the president pushing hydroxychloroquine, has now filed a scathing whistleblower report.
- A member of Jared Kushner’s Covid-19 task force has filed a report with Congress as they were alarmed by the large number of volunteers Kushner is relying on who have no experience. Many of the people tasked by Kushner with securing a supply chain for PPE have never worked in health care OR supply chain management.
- In an interview with David Muir tonight, the president was asked what actions he has taken over the last 3 years to resupply the national stockpile of PPE he has continually said was empty when he took office. The president said he had a lot of things going on, people refusing to allow the country to be successful, “Russia Russia Russia,” “Ukraine Ukraine,” and impeachment for his inaction. In the same interview, he repeated his frequent lie that Obama left him with broken Covid-19 tests. The virus did not exist before 2019 therefore there were no tests for it. Asked to defend his February remark that there were only 15 Covid-19 cases which would soon be going to zero, the president said it was true then rambled about how much testing the US is doing and his Chinese travel ban. He also said we tested people flying in from China after his restriction was in place. This is a lie. No testing was done.
