Trump has been trying to monopolize a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Trump administration has offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive access to a Covid-19 vaccine, German media have reported.

As one might offer the officer in charge of the lifeboat “large sums of money” to push everyone but the briber and the briber’s friends over the side. If one were a festering piece of shit.

The German government is trying to fight off what it sees as an aggressive takeover bid by the US, the broadsheet Die Welt reports, citing German government circles. The US president had offered the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac “large sums of money” to gain exclusive access to their work, wrote

Of course they did.

After it was widely reported that Tom Hanks and his wife were able to simply walk into a clinic in Australia with the symptoms of a common cold and instantly get a coronavirus test – which was positive – Americans are beginning to ask out loud, “Why can’t we get tested?“

Because $$$, that’s why. Which is more important, people’s survival or more money for Trump and his goons?

Silly question.

According to President Obama‘s Ebola Czar (last night on Rachel Maddow‘s show), Ron Klain, Trump “privatized“ the testing here in the United States. Instead of taking the World Health Organization (WHO) test kits which are cheap and widely available all over the planet, and

Cool, this is helpful – the Surgeon General of the US tells us to stop bickering and focus on this health crisis problem.

The Surgeon General calls for no more bickering, no more partisanship, no more criticism or finger pointing, and less stories about what happened in the past pic.twitter.com/CpM4vzCWaf

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 14, 2020

Right, because we’re the ones who’ve been doing all that, as opposed to the bloated ignorant orange menace he works for.

The surgeon general is giving journalists “straight talk from the nation’s doctor” and instructing the press to have “no more bickering, no more partisanship, no more criticism or finger-pointing” in news coverage.

He did not mention the president’s twitter feed.

— Philip Rucker

The White House doctor also says Trump doesn’t need to quarantine…which is even more bonkers.

On Friday evening, Conley said the White House became aware that another individual who Trump had contact with had tested positive for coronavirus. That individual is Nestor Forster, Brazil’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, who tested positive on Friday, according to the Brazilian Embassy.

Conley said Trump had spent more time in closer proximity to Forster, but “all interactions occurred before any symptom onset.”

But the virus can be spread before symptom onset.

“These interactions would be categorized as LOW risk for transmission per CDC guidelines, and as such, there is no indication for home quarantine at this time,” Conley wrote.

Which, again, is exactly … Read the rest

Nothing hinky about this, not at all. Trump’s doctor says No Need For A Test, nosirree.

The president does not need to take a test to determine if he’s positive for coronavirus because two interactions he had with known patients were “low risk,” a White House doctor said in a memo released Friday.

That’s not a thing. Interactions with people known to have the virus are not “low risk.” That doctor must have a gun to his head.

Physician to the president, Sean P. Conley, argued that because Trump’s interaction was minimal, including a handshake, and because Wajngarten and another patient were not exhibiting symptoms at the time they socialized with the president, Trump’s unlikely to get the virus.

Because Saturday, and pandemic, and toilet paper is sold out everywhere, and Wegmans is promoting homeopathic “meds,” and the US president can’t read.

Children’s excellent fine not at all bonkers reasons for crying.

There are many more. I can’t read them all at once because my abs start to hurt.… Read the rest

The White House has a transcript of yesterday’s car crash in the rose garden, the one where Trump was unable to read a particular word in his prepared Remarks. Here is that passage:

To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort, today I am officially declaring a national emergency.  Two very big words.  The action I am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion of very importantly — very important and a large amount of money for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.

The glitch is clear but the transcript still tidies it up a little. How it actually went was:

of…very importantly…very important anttf…a very

He’s a virus bomb.

He fingered the microphone and put his lips up close. He shook hands with everyone he could. Donald Trump, who promised you’re going to win so much you’ll get sick of winning, might also just make you sick.

In the White House rose garden on Friday, the US president defied the advice of medical experts standing behind him and behaved like a one-man coronavirus cannon.

Reporters wanted to know whether this 73-year-old man with a [bad] diet – his former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes – is putting himself and others at risk. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus days after taking part in meetings with Trump

And then there’s Yamiche Alcindor’s question, and his rude and stupid and mendacious response.

Video of my question to @realDonaldTrump today on his administration's disbanding of the White House team responsible for coordinating responses to pandemics.

He called my question nasty & said he knew nothing about it.

I call it a relevant, fair, and truth-seeking question. https://t.co/ncYwqZ0Xtp

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 13, 2020

He actually turns to Anthony Fauci to ask if he knows about this disbanding of the White House team responsible for dealing with epidemics.… Read the rest

But even worse…at 15 seconds he gets to a word he can’t read.

Trump says the words national emergency are "two very big words." pic.twitter.com/T78Lx57FZq

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 13, 2020

“Of…very importantlee…very important anttf…a very large amount…”

I’m wondering what the word was. Substantial? Significant? Unprecedented?

It’s pretty unprecedented having a presssident who can’t read “unprecedented” when he encounters it.… Read the rest

This happened.

NEWS: Trump declares a national emergency in the face of the #coronavirus.

"Two very big words." pic.twitter.com/ciWFezx1zO

— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) March 13, 2020

Dear god. Suddenly we’re five years old, sitting on the tiny chairs.… Read the rest

Someone else has noticed the endless repetition of slogans in place of actual thought.

It sure is interesting how many apparently “progressive” men are ready to jump on any opportunity to harass, threaten and wish violence and death upon women when they are given permission to do it.

The same is true of the word “TERF” (“Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”). On IWD it’s all over the place, reminding women that if they dare to question the rhetoric of trans activists then they’ll be branded with that modern equivalent of the scarlet letter and leftist men given the green light to hurl misogynistic abuse at them. Even women who subscribe to gender ideology are uncomfortable with this ( I know because

The Glasgow Times reports:

A GLASGOW couple have expressed their shock over how they were treated in a Marks & Spencer store while buying a suit for a relative’s funeral.

Both men, who we are not naming, say they were subjected to inappropriate comments while trying on a pair of trousers in a changing room situated within the Glasgow Fort store earlier this month.

Sounds a bit weird, two people trying on one pair of trousers – is that what the inappropriate comments were about? Was someone explaining that a pair of trousers has room for only two legs, not four?

One of the men wanted to try on trousers to wear to his gran’s funeral and on approaching

So, we learn that the Trump admin could have used the WHO test for the virus but decided not to.

On Saturday Jan. 11 — a month and a half before the first Covid-19 case not linked to travel was diagnosed in the United States — Chinese scientists posted the genome of the mysterious new virus, and within a week virologists in Berlin had produced the first diagnostic test for the disease.

Soon after, researchers in other nations rolled out their own tests, too, sometimes with different genetic targets. By the end of February, the World Health Organization had shipped tests to nearly 60 countries.

But we were not one of the 60.

Why the United States declined to use

Trump flailing and spitting poison:

…. Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020

No.

Trump is trying to blame the CDC and Obama for his own epic failure to adequately respond to the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, Trump has still not declared a national emergency that would allow FEMA to be activated to help with the response needed to fight the coronavirus.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) March 13,

When Trump attempted to Address the Nation:

In the most scripted of presidential settings, a prime-time televised address to the nation, President Trump decided to ad-lib — and his errors triggered a market meltdown, panicked travelers overseas and crystallized for his critics just how dangerously he has fumbled his management of the coronavirus.

He always does decide to ad-lib. I guess that’s because no words written by mere Someone Else can ever match the divine elixir of what spills out of his golden head.

Even Trump — a man practically allergic to admitting mistakes — knew he’d screwed up by declaring Wednesday night that his ban on travel from Europe would include cargo and trade, and acknowledged as much

Meanwhile up north…

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the wife of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, becoming the latest in a string of high-profile individuals to become infected with the potentially deadly pathogen.

The issue isn’t “high profile” so much as “head of state or spouse thereof.”

On Thursday, the prime minister spoke by telephone with President Trump and the two leaders discussed efforts to respond to the pandemic, with nearly 135,000 known cases globally and nearly 5,000 deaths from the virus.

That is, one of them did that and the other babbled incoherently.

In a readout of the call, the prime minister’s office said: “The two leaders discussed the steps they are

A kind of divine justice…

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who met with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, has tested positive for the 2019 novel coronavirus, Brazilian news outlet Jornal O Dia and Fox News reported Friday.

Bolsonaro was tested Thursday after his press secretary Fabio Wajngarten, who also met with Trump, tested positive for the virus. Wajngarten’s diagnosis was confirmed by the president’s office.

So Trump has had contact with at least two people who have tested + for the virus. If nothing else we can be confident he is not happy. I want him to be not happy.

Bolsonaro and Wajngarten were part of a delegation who traveled to