- Mike Pence, who heads the Covid-19 response for the entire country, privately told governors to downplay increasing statistics as intermittent and the fault of things like increased testing. This isn’t true. In response to the Trump rally in Tulsa this week, Pence said the state was seeing declining numbers. This is a lie. Oklahoma’s worst two days for infections came this weekend. Tulsa’s largest increase in cases was yesterday.
- The president today told the press (and tweeted out) that if we were not testing so many people there would not be so many infections. Nearly every take on this has been wrong. Literally his words said that but what he meant is that if we weren’t testing so many people, we wouldn’t have so many confirmed infections which would not look as bad. He does not actually care how many people are sick and dying. He cares about the optics of how many people are sick and dying. Early on in the crisis, Trump openly said he did not want a cruise ship full of infected people to dock as it would increase the number of reported cases in the US. Those people were still sick regardless of where they were located. He simply didn’t want the imagery of an extra 21 cases. We now have had 2.16 MILLION confirmed cases in the US.
- A Trump nominee to a high ranking Pentagon position has a history of conspiracy theories he’s advanced in public. Anthony Tata said President Obama was a Manchurian candidate attempting to help out The Muslim Brotherhood. He said Obama was taking military actions aimed to allow ISIS to expand their foothold in the Middle-East and North Africa, going so far as to accuse the former president of treason. Numerous Trump appointees have had to withdraw or resign after it was discovered they had posted sexist and/or racist statements as well as pushing conspiracy theories. (Notably, the president himself is a conspiracy theorist).
- Florida in April purchased 1 million doses of hydroxychloroquine. They have 980,000 doses remaining as there still has been no evidence the drug treats Covid-19. The president asked today why HHS isn’t reporting that the drug works because he’s had “so many people” who were “so thrilled” from the results from taking the drug. HHS is not reporting studies showing the drug works because there are none.
- Echoing an earlier attack by Sarah Sanders, the Republican Party sent out a press release mocking Joe Biden’s stutter.
- The Trump administration rolled back protections against discriminations against LGBTQ people regarding access to healthcare. After their decision, it became legal for doctors or even emergency rooms to simply refuse to treat gay or transgender people. (Yes, this has happened). In a monumental Supreme Court decision this morning, the justices ruled that gender identity and sexual orientation are covered under Title VII’s anti-discrimination protections. This will not immediately undo the Trump rollback or his transgender military ban, but both are now far more difficult to support from a legal standpoint. President Biden, if elected, could immediately undo Trump’s damage in both areas.
- Fox News was caught (poorly) photoshopping a gunman into multiple images of BLM protesters in Seattle. After initially defending the images, the network halfway apologized saying they had not made clear they were “splicing” images together. Again, the same gunman appeared in multiple images from the protest on their website.
- CNN ran a poll which shows Biden leading Trump nationally by a large margin. The Trump campaign sent CNN a cease and desist letter because they did not like this. A campaign lawyer went on CNN to explain why CNN needed to legally withdraw their poll. Unhappy with how that segment went, the Trump Campaign is now demanding CNN apologize for it. For evidence the poll was unscientific, the campaign has both lied about its methodology and cited another polling firm with a C/D rating from 538.
- Voice of America is relatively unknown within the United States. The broadcaster carries news, produced by the US government, in foreign countries. The director and deputy director of the organization just resigned in protest over Trump nominating Michael Pack to oversee VOA. Pack is a conservative activist who has collaborated with former Trump official and right-wing troll Steve Bannon. Pack is currently under investigation for funneling revenue from a non-profit he runs to his private production company.
