Henning Schroeder at The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota:

Before the trophy went to Adolf Hitler, German Emperor and King of Prussia Wilhelm II held the award for Most Hated Man on Earth. And while Hitler’s Third Reich has become the ultimate go-to place for much journalistic handwringing about the horrible times we are living in, in reality it feels like we are still stuck in Wilhelm’s Second Reich — it’s Kaiserzeit in America. Donald Trump and the last German Emperor have a lot in common, the vanity, insecurity, the penchant for bombast and persönliches Regiment (personal rule), to name just a few. In Wilhelm’s case the brakes on his impulsive and egotistical personality came off after he fired Bismarck, the experienced chancellor he inherited from his father, and surrounded himself with sycophantic generals and noble toadies who went along with his imperial fantasies and straight into World War I.

We had a little conversation about that exact parallel a couple of days ago at the Miscellany Room, via What a Maroon:

This popped up in my Facebook memories from two years ago. No one even tried to guess who it was referring to. Any guesses here?

“He believed in force, and the ‘survival of the fittest’ in domestic as well as foreign politics… [He] was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics… [His] personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion. He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives…, as with asserting his will.”

It was that very Kaiser, child of Queen Victoria’s firstborn Vicky.

I am reminded of those spineless Wilhelmine characters every time I am watching a White House press briefing. It’s not so much the bumbling fool at the microphone who advertises Clorox for healing the nation. That’s to be expected from someone who has been in sales all his life. What’s truly troubling is the backdrop of supposedly educated advisors and cabinet members who gaze at the president nodding their heads like bobble toys every time he opens his mouth. Not much different from Wilhelm’s bootlicking court jesters.

The boot in the face, the brute   
Brute heart of a brute like you.

The Globe and Mail reports:

Organizations across Canada that work to help sexually exploited women and girls say the Liberal government has decided not to renew federal funding they rely on, forcing them to close programs.

Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre, said her organization will have to close its federally funded anti-sex-trafficking program. The program operated for five years and served more than 3,000 trafficked, prostituted, sexually exploited and at-risk women and girls.

So Trudeau is pro-trafficking then?

Under the program, women and girls could access their services immediately, Ms. Walker said. They could drop in to the centre when they needed clothing or to be some place warm, and staff members helped them access health facilities and education. The federal funding also helped public awareness initiatives, with members of LAWC visiting schools and teaching students about the tactics of traffickers, such as luring.

Pro-trafficking and anti-providing services for trafficked women and girls. Sweet.

Sex trafficking has not slowed down because of the pandemic, according to Ms. Walker. She said her agency has received six phone calls from parents whose daughters were lured online to “remove their clothes and masturbate.” The girls’ actions were videotaped and posted on the Internet.

“Trafficking will never slow down,” Ms. Walker said.

But funding will always disappear.

Trump & his Goons want the CDC to fix the death count for them.

President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths. And they’re pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported, according to five administration officials working on the government’s response to the pandemic.

The numbers are too big, Trump explains.

Officials inside the CDC, five of whom spoke to The Daily Beast, said they are pushing back against that request, claiming it could falsely skew the mortality rate at a time when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of the coronavirus is counted. Scientists and doctors working with the task force, including Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said the U.S. death-toll count is likely higher than is being reflected in government data sets. And several local officials in hot spot areas said they’ve seen hundreds if not thousands more deaths over the last two months than in the same time period over the last several years. They presume many of those individuals contracted the coronavirus. 

Yebbut the numbers are too big. Make them smaller.

“I don’t worry about this overreporting issue,” Bob Anderson, the chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch in CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told The Daily Beast. Anderson’s team is in charge of aggregating, calculating, and reporting coronavirus deaths for the agency. “We’re almost certainly underestimating the number of deaths [in the country].”

What would he know about it?!! They should have Jared Kushner doing the counting.

The pressure being placed on the CDC is yet another tension point between the agency and the White House that has erupted over its handling of the coronavirus. Those tensions have reached a boiling point over the last several weeks as the CDC has worked to publish its guidelines for states working to reopen their local economies. The guidelines, which provide detailed information about how local officials can begin to allow some residents to attend religious gatherings and summer camps, were contested by White House officials who sought to shelve many of the agency’s recommendations. 

Thank god that during the worst pandemic any of us have ever seen we have White House officials who try to bully and silence the CDC.

Once you start a fight, be sure to keep it going forever, because that will make you look Tough and Resolute and Manly despite the weird goldy combover.

The Guardian explains:

At a briefing in the White House Rose Garden, [ Weijia ] Jiang asked the president why he continues to claim – wrongly, as he did again on Tuesday – that the US is performing better than other countries in terms of testing for coronavirus.

“Why does that matter?” asked the reporter, who was born in China and came to the US at the age of two. “Why is this a global competition when, every day, Americans are still losing their lives?”

It was a pissy question, and she asked it in a pissy voice. A round of applause for the CBS News reporter.

“They’re losing their lives everywhere in the world,” Trump said. “And maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, OK?”

The president called on another reporter but she paused as Jiang interjected: “Sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically?”

And he flounced out of the press briefing.

His comment was condemned as racist by some commentators.

Yes it was.

I hadn’t heard of Orange Man Bad. Apparently it’s a meme about how stupid the libtards are for caring that Trump is bad. A Republican takes issue with that thought.

Amidst this death and destruction the president of the United States has been spending his days pecking around on his iPhone, tweeting that certain cable TV hosts are murderers and dogs and that the husband of his top strategist is a “moonface” loser. Oh, and he claimed—again—that the opposition party and the American media are “The Enemy of the People!”

…

The malignant self-obsession and childish vitriol only scratches the surface of the man’s flaws. His compulsions aren’t hidden or covered up. They are broadcast for the entire country to see, for hours on end, every day, late into the night.

It’s not deniable, so his fans have to embrace it, which is where “Orange Man Bad” comes in.

To these Trump supporters, and cos-play non-supporters, it is only the simpleminded folk who cling to the superstitious belief that a bad man having the most important job in the world is a serious concern. Those of us who are bothered by the insane ravings of a narcissistic imbecile aren’t able to see the big picture.

…

The Orange Man Bad practitioners would argue that they are simply trying to expose the shallowness of Trump’s opposition, the weakness of their argumentation.

To put it another way, pointing out that Trump is bad is too obvious.

Well sure it is, but whose fault is that? His badness is indeed shriekingly obvious, but way too many people voted for him anyway.

[T]he plain fact is that Donald Trump is not just a bad man. He is an avatar for iniquity and immorality and selfishness. He runs the table on the seven deadly sins and demonstrates not a trace of any of the four cardinal virtues. He possesses not a single character trait that you would want your child to fully emulate. He cares about nothing and no one besides himself.

And that’s all we need to know, isn’t it. He literally does care about nothing and no one other than his empty hollow echoing self, we can see him doing it every day, and it’s sickening.

Republican Kentucky senator says uppity black former president should Keep His Mouth Shut.

Last week, remarks by Obama were leaked to Yahoo News that were highly critical about Trump and his administration, seeming to break a convention in US politics that former occupants of the White House rarely criticize their successors.

Does that convention apply to private conversations though? I don’t think so. Obama’s remarks were leaked.

But really that’s beside the point; I wouldn’t think McConnell had more of a case if Obama had made his remarks in an editorial in the Washington Post. Conventions are all very well but Trump is not a normal “occupant of the White House.” It’s not just that he has bad policies, it’s not even just that he has bad policies plus he’s dimwitted and untalented (like Bush and Reagan). It’s a whole lot more than that.

Plus, if we’re talking about conventions, there’s also a convention that the Senate isn’t supposed to ignore a president’s nomination for the Supreme Court on the ludicrous grounds that there will be an election in almost a year. Really though that’s not so much a convention as a constitutional duty.

Asked about Obama “slamming” the administration for its response to the coronavirus outbreak, he said: “I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut.

“You know, we know he doesn’t like much this administration is doing. That’s understandable. But I think it’s a little bit classless frankly to critique an administration that comes after you.”

Ah, classless. Yes. Unlike the deeply classy Trump, who vomits out public insults hundreds of times a day, who brags about grabbing them by the pussy, who bragged about wanting to fuck his own daughter, who has the ugliest tackiest trashiest pseudo-Versailles living room on the planet – that Trump.

Trump started yesterday’s press brawl by reading a statement, adding his own random remarks. It’s faintly comical how easy it is to pick out the ad libs.

In the span of just a few short months, we’ve developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close.  This is a core element of our plan to safely and gradually reopen America.  And we’re opening, and we’re starting, and there’s enthusiasm like I haven’t seen in a long time.

See them?

In the span of just a few short months, we’ve developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close.  This is a core element of our plan to safely and gradually reopen America.  And we’re opening, and we’re starting, and there’s enthusiasm like I haven’t seen in a long time.

This one made me laugh:

his week, the United States will pass 10 million tests conducted — nearly double the number of any other country.  We’re testing more people per capita than South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland, and many other countries — and, in some cases, combined.

“and, in some cases, combined” – thus making a nonsense of “per capita” and revealing that he has no idea what it means and wouldn’t understand if you told him.

Later on he tells a straight-up lie about it.

Thanks to the courage of our citizens and our aggressive strategy, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved.  And we have saved — and if you look at on a per-100,000 basis, we’re at the best part of the pack, right on the bottom.  Germany and us are leading the world.  Germany and the United States are leading the world — lives saved per hundred thousand.

No we’re not. We’re fourth from the top, not anywhere near the bottom. Also, “us are leading the world” ain’t the right way to say that.

He’s upbeat though.

Day after day, we’re making tremendous strides.  With the dedication of our doctors and nurses — these are incredible people, these are brave people, these are warriors — with the devotion of our manufacturing workers, food suppliers, and lab technicians, and with the profound patriotism of the American people, we will defeat this horrible enemy, we will revive our economy, and we will transition into greatness.  That’s a phrase you’re going to hear a lot because that’s what’s going to happen.

Unscripted rah-rahs bolded.

We’re going into the third quarter, and we’re going to do well.  In the fourth quarter, we’re going to do very good.  And next year, I think we’re going to have one of the best years we’ve ever had because there’s a tremendous pent-up demand.  It’s a demand — and I’m feeling it.  I’ve felt things a lot over my life, and I’ve made a lot of good calls.  It’s a demand like I don’t think I’ve ever seen.  There’s a pent-up demand.  There’s a — there’s a spirit of this country like few have seen.  And I think you can say — and we’ve helped a lot of the countries a lot.  Really, a lot.  There’s a tremendous spirit all over the world to beat this terrible, terrible thing.

Fight fiercely Harvard!

Trouble is Coronavirus don’t give a shit. Coronavirus eats you whether you’re a warrior or not, whether you have a tremendous spirit or not, whether you have a tremendous pent-up demand or not, whether you’re transitioning into greatness or not.

Then he brags about the border, and the wall, and how awesome it all is, and how few people are coming in. He doesn’t pause to consider that that could be because of the pandemic as opposed to his overwhelming genius.

The first question was about how the system broke down such that people in the White House tested positive and Fauci had to go into quarantine.

I don’t think the system broke down at all.  One person tested positive, surprisingly, because, the previous day, tested negative.  And three people that were in contact — relative contact, who I believe they’ve all tested totally negative, but they are going to, for a period of time, self-isolate.  So that’s not breaking down.  It can happen.  It’s the hidden enemy.  Remember that.  It’s the hidden enemy.  And so things happen.  But the three tested negative.  The one who tested positive will be fine.  They will be absolutely fine.

Let’s linger for a moment over ” One person tested positive, surprisingly, because, the previous day, tested negative.” Let’s wonder all over again how he thinks that’s supposed to go – that if you test negative one day it’s impossible to test positive the next day? But then how would anyone ever – oh never mind.

Notice also his blithe certainty about the future health of the infected person.

And then there’s this:

I think one of the things we’re most proud of is — this just came out — deaths per 100,000 people, death — so deaths per 100,000 people: Germany and the United States are at the lowest rung of that ladder.  Meaning, low is a positive, not a negative.  Germany and the United States are the two best in deaths per 100,000 people, which, frankly, to me, that’s perhaps the most important number there is.

Uh…no. That’s not right.

Aaron Blake at the Post this morning:

President Trump has made a series of obviously false claims about the coronavirus. But at Monday’s news briefing — the first in weeks in which Trump and coronavirus task force officials took questions — he offered one of his biggest whoppers yet.

After being asked about a mysterious condition affecting children, then having task force member Adm. Brett Giroir correct him that the condition has actually proven fatal, Trump turned to better news. Or at least what he wrongly stated was better news.

He quotes that passage I just quoted.

It’s true that, while the United States has the most confirmed coronavirus cases and the most confirmed coronavirus deaths, it lags behind some Western European countries when it comes to per capita deaths. I wrote about this a week ago, noting that the raw number can be deceiving when it comes to the total impact on countries.

But the United States is nowhere close to having one of the lowest per capita death rates. In fact, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, we rank ninth-highest out of more than 140 countries for which information is available.

We’re near the top of the 140 as opposed to near the bottom. The opposite of what Trump said – what Trump, the president, said on camera to the country and the world.

Pairing the United States with Germany is another puzzling decision. Germany is one of the envies of the Western world when it comes to its coronavirus response, having ramped up testing very early and then dealing with a far less significant outbreak than its neighbors. But putting the United States next to it is ridiculous; Germany has about nine deaths per 100,000 people, as compared with about 24 per 100,000 people in the United States.

Ok but Trump’s granddaddy came here from Germany so that makes it ok.

In Kabul:

Two babies and 11 mothers and nurses have been killed in a militant attack on a hospital in the Afghan capital.

Another 15 people, including a number of children, were injured when several gunmen attacked the Kabul hospital on Tuesday morning, officials said.

Part of the hospital is run by the international medical charity, Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), and some of those working there are foreigners.

So God hates women, babies, medical workers, and foreigners.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on The more accurate terminology.

I think it’s important to separate two things.

1) The underlying ruling is, I think, poor. I disagree with the substance of it, and I think a judge should refrain from limiting counsel’s language except in very clear-cut cases.

2) The reaction of the ADF’s counsel is worse. First, it’s shitty advocacy. When a judge tells you to stop saying something because it doesn’t help your case and he considers it uncivil, you STOP SAYING IT. Find another way to make your arguments. The entire point of wanting to use one term instead of another is because you’re an advocate trying to persuade the judge. Persisting in using a term that this judge has told you he does not find persuasive or helpful to your case is just counterproductive. (Even if this ruling extends to an eventual jury trial, it’s still fairly dumb to piss off the judge.) Unless your real goal is to lose the case while preening for the media and your GoFundMe donors or whoever, which seems to be the real purpose behind a lot of public litigation these days, so who knows. I’m just one of those dumb old school litigators who tries to actually win his cases. Second, filing a motion to recuse because you don’t like a judge’s ruling is utter nonsense. It’s something that pro se litigants and hacks do. There are reams of authority that say that you can’t do that. If it’s an appealable order, then appeal it. If it’s not an appealable order, then either take a writ if that’s available, or violate the order so as to create an appealable sanctions/contempt order (good luck with that! better hope you’re right!), or just make your damn case and add it to the grounds for appeal if you lose.

According to this chart the US doesn’t have the highest per capita rate of infections. I stand corrected.

Of course, the number of actual cases in a country is going to be higher than official figures show, with testing rates also varying dramatically. As with all figures relating to confirmed cases, they should be treated with caution.

Sir, sir, what did you mean, sir?

Hours after Trump posted a string of tweets and retweets about “Obamagate” — a new conspiracy theory that holds Obama responsible for masterminding the Russia investigation and railroading former Trump administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn into a guilty plea for lying to the FBI (never mind that there’s no evidence of investigatory misconduct) — Philip Rucker of the Washington Post called Trump’s bluff.

“In one of your Mother’s Day tweets, you appeared to accuse President Obama of ‘the biggest political crime in American history, by far’ — those were your words. What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing, and do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him?” Rucker asked, during a news conference that was ostensibly about the coronavirus.

The crime of obamagating, duh.

“Uh, Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time,” he began. “It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at now, all this information that’s being released — and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning — some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.”

So Trump. Let’s do some highlighting.

“Uh, Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time,” he began. “It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at now, all this information that’s being released — and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning — some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.”

What’s been going on? What happened? What’s gone on? All what information? What terrible things? What is “it”?

He’s the kid who never did the reading, and thinks the teacher won’t notice the string of empty signifiers.

Of course, “Obamagate” does not involve a crime, and there’s no evidence that Obama or his top officials conspired against Trump — quite the opposite. So when Rucker pressed the point by asking what exactly the ostensible crime was, Trump resorted to smears.

“You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”

More to the point, he resorted to yet more empty signifiers. You know; it’s very obvious; read the newspapers. Many words, no content. If he had anything he would say the thing he had. He doesn’t have that thing, he doesn’t have any thing. He has no thing.

Trump reached a new level of horrifying in today’s nightmare “press conference.”

Prevailed? We still have the highest rate of infection per capita on the whole planet, don’t we? Along with the highest number of deaths per capita? If that’s prevailing, what would abject failure look like?

Turns out he meant we have prevailed in testing. We haven’t, of course, but that’s what he meant.

He never says what “the crime” is.

The grand finale:

The Guardian has details on the truth or otherwise of Trump’s “virus going down everywhere!!” tweet:

Trump says “coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere.”

Here’s what we know. Nearly 1,330,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus in the US, more than any other nation on the planet, and at least 79,500 have died, according to a Johns Hopkins database.

…

According to a New York Times database, new cases are decreasing in just 14 states of 50 states. Among them are densely populated states like New York and Michigan, which were among the hardest hit. The list also includes sparsely-populated states like Montana and Alaska.

New cases are still rising in nine US states, including states like Arizona that is pressing ahead with its re-opening on Monday. In the remaining states, the growth rate of new cases has remained relatively steady.

…

On Monday, Trump slammed Pennsylvania, a battleground state led by a Democratic governor, for not moving faster to reopen its economy. In the tweet, he broadened his attack to accused Democrats across the country of intentionally slowing their states’ return to normalcy to hurt his chances of re-election.

It’s all about him. “Never mind whether you die or not, do what it takes to get me re-elected!” All completely normal.

The tweet.

The reality:

US Coronavirus Cases:

1,377,408

Deaths:

81,190

If that’s better, what would worse look like?

Oh but laydeez are supposed to be kiiiiiiiiiiind.

That’s like saying it’s pointlessly offensive to call a murder “homicide” in court. It’s like saying it’s pointlessly offensive to call forcible uninvited penetration “rape.” It’s like saying it’s pointlessly offensive to call Trump a liar.

The whole point of the case is that whether or not you think that Yearwood and Miller “feel” female inside, the reality remains that they have male bodies and for that reason should not be racing against girls. People who have male bodies are males, whatever they feel like inside their heads. It’s not remotely “callous and hurtful” to say that. It’s quite a lot more callous and hurtful to steal women’s medals and scholarships by claiming to be female when you’re not.

And “trans female” is not more accurate. Quite the opposite: it’s more confusing, and/or more obfuscating. Training us all to call men who say they feel like women “women” conditions us to believe that they really are women, which of course is the goal of trans activism but that doesn’t mean it should be the goal of the rest of us. The feminist move to call women “women” rather than various belittling nicknames took nothing away from anyone. The trans activist move to call men “women” – well you can see the difference without my spelling it out.

Was it “callous and hurtful” to refer to Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby as “men”? No. Why should that change just because some men like to think of themselves as women?

When The National Review is on the sanity side of the argument…

Attorneys representing three female high school track athletes in their effort to bar biological males from competing against them filed a motion on Saturday calling for the presiding judge to recuse himself after he forbid the attorneys from referring to the transgender athletes at issue as “males.”

[Editorial correction: it’s “after he forbade the attorneys to refer”]

The ADF filed suit in February against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) on behalf of three girls — Selina Soule, Alana Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell. The suit challenges the CIAC policy allowing students to compete in the division that accords with their gender identity on the grounds that it disadvantages women in violation of the Title IX prohibition against discrimination on the “basis of sex.”

Which it indisputably does. You can claim that’s the price women have to pay so that men can have the right to be called women in every context and situation, but you can’t claim there is no such disadvantage. The first is debatable, the second is just a lie.

NR has a transcript of a phone call in which the judge laid out his reasoning:

What I’m saying is you must refer to them as “transgender females” rather than as “males.” Again, that’s the more accurate terminology, and I think that it fully protects your client’s legitimate interests. Referring to these individuals as “transgender females” is consistent with science, common practice and perhaps human decency. To refer to them as “males,” period, is not accurate, certainly not as accurate, and I think it’s needlessly provocative. I don’t think that you surrender any legitimate interest or position if you refer to them as transgender females. That is what the case is about. This isn’t a case involving males who have decided that they want to run in girls’ events. This is a case about girls who say that transgender girls should not be allowed to run in girls’ events. So going forward, we will not refer to the proposed intervenors as “males”; understood?

Before we even get to the core issue, there’s a slightly less core issue, which is that the judge doesn’t even know that. He can’t know it. He doesn’t know that the two transgender athletes really are transgender and really are not just exploiting the category for the sake of winning races and scholarships. He can’t, in short, know that they’re not faking it.

But even if they’re not faking it, even if they “sincerely” identify as trans girls aka they identify as girls, the fact still remains that literally speaking they are not girls. That’s the core issue, and judges shouldn’t be forcing anyone to repeat these stupid lies in court.

The lead attorney for ADF got the judge to agree that they could say “transgender” as opposed to “transgender females,” but then the judge accused the attorneys of bullying.

So if you feel strongly that you and your clients have a right to refer to these individuals as “males” and that you therefore do not want to comply with my order, then that’s unfortunate. But I’ll give you some time to think about it and you can let me know if it’s a problem. If it is, gosh, maybe we’ll need to do something. I don’t want to bully you, but at the same time, I don’t want you to be bullying anybody else. Maybe you might need to take an application to the Court of Appeals. I don’t know. But I certainly don’t want to put civility at risk in this case.

This, again, is reality turned on its head. The trans athletes are conspicuously much bigger and more muscular than the female athletes they’ve been beating at their sport, yet they are portrayed as the sad fragile victims in this scenario.

In the motion filed Saturday, the ADF attorneys argue that Chatigyny’s order is “legally unprecedented” and disrupts the appearance of impartiality.

“A disinterested observer would reasonably believe that the Court’s order and comments have destroyed the appearance of impartiality in this proceeding. That requires recusal,” reads the motion, which was obtained by National Review. “To be sure, the public debate over gender identity and sports is a heated and emotional one. This only increases the urgency that court preserve their role as the singular place in society where all can be heard and present facts before an impartial tribunal.”

Facts, not fictions, not fantasies, not magic realism, not “identities.”

60 Minutes reports:

An American scientist who collaborates with the Wuhan Institute of Virology had his grant terminated in the wake of unsubstantiated claims that COVID-19 is either manmade or leaked out of a Chinese government lab.

Because if there’s anything we need right now it’s to cut off the funding of virology research.

Peter Daszak is a British-born American Ph.D. who’s spent a career discovering dangerous viruses in wildlife, especially bats.

In 2003, in Malaysia, he warned 60 Minutes a pandemic was coming. 

Peter Daszak in 2003 interview: What worries me the most is that we are going to miss the next emerging disease, that we’re suddenly going to find a SARS virus that moves from one part of the planet to another, wiping out people as it moves along.

Then he became president of EcoHealth Alliance.

In China, EcoHealth has worked for 15 years with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Together they’ve catalogued hundreds of bat viruses, research that is critical right now. 

Peter Daszak: The breakthrough drug, Remdesivir, that seems to have some impact on COVID-19 was actually tested against the viruses we discovered under our NIH research funding.

The drug wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for that funding. The interviewer asks him if that’s the case and he says it is.

But his funding from the NIH, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was killed, two weeks ago, by a political disinformation campaign targeting China’s Wuhan Institute.

On April 14, Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed China’s Wuhan Institute had, quote, “birthed a monster.” Gaetz is a vigorous defender of the president. He’s been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly threatening a witness against Mr. Trump and he led a protest to delay impeachment testimony. 

And now he’s making sure thousands more people will die a hideous death.

Matt Gaetz on “Tucker Carlson Tonight”: The NIH gives this $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they then advertise that they need coronavirus researchers. Following that, coronavirus erupts in Wuhan.

That’s a lie though. The grant was not to the Wuhan Institute. The lie spread.

Reporter in White House press briefing: There’s also another report that the NIH, under the Obama administration, in 2015 gave that lab $3.7 million in a grant. Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China?

President Trump: The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million? I’ve been hearing about that. And we’ve instructed that if any grants are going to that area – we’re looking at it, literally, about an hour ago, and also early in the morning. We will end that grant very quickly. 

But the grant was not to the Wuhan Institute.

That grant was to Peter Daszak’s U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance for disease prevention it does throughout the world. His work was considered so important that, last year, the grant was reauthorized and increased by the Trump administration.

…

The Wuhan Institute is internationally respected. Two years ago, a team from the U.S. Embassy visited. That team sent a cable to Washington, concerned that one lab in the complex had a serious shortage of trained investigators. But the cable, first reported by the Washington Post, emphasized the Wuhan Institute is “critical to future… outbreak prediction and prevention.” EcoHealth’s work with Wuhan ended one week after Mr. Trump’s briefing room pledge, when the NIH revoked the grant.

Matt Gaetz on “Tucker Carlson Tonight”: I have called on Secretary Azar to immediately halt this grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They have not been honest and at worst, negligent to the point of many, many deaths throughout the world. 

[60 Minutes] Dishonest and negligent allegations have now ended EcoHealth’s carefully reviewed research designed to stop pandemics. Representative Matt Gaetz wore a gas mask on the floor of the House to lampoon the crisis. This was back in the beginning of March, weeks before masks were common. Peter Daszak, whose researchers wear masks to shield them from viruses in the wild, says his team is now facing layoffs.

Peter Daszak: This politicization of science is really damaging. You know, the conspiracy theories out there have essentially closed down communication between scientists in China and scientists in the U.S. We need that communication in an outbreak to learn from them how they control it so we can control it better. It’s sad to say, but it will probably cost lives. By sort of narrow-mindedly focusing in on ourselves, or on labs, or on certain cultural politics, we miss the real enemy. 

It’s hard to see how it can help costing lives.

I wish there were a hell so that Matt Gaetz could burn in it.

We’re now in the “let’em die” phase of Trump’s regime.

The message from President Trump and Republicans on the novel coronavirus has gone through multiple phases, each as misleading and/or bizarre as the last. First they told us the virus would barely touch us. Then they said it was serious but Trump’s management would quickly make it disappear. Then they said it could have been worse, and anyway it isn’t Trump’s fault.

And now they’re saying “Yes yes yes many thousands will die, now get back to your job!”

“There’ll be more death” as we resume economic activity, says President Trump, but “we have to get our country back.”

You know, the one where hospitals are full and sick people are piled up in the streets and mass burials are a commonplace.

The states rushing to reopen do not meet even the modest guidelines the Trump White House issued about when it would be safe to do so. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who is eager to lift his state’s lockdown order, “shut down the work of academic experts predicting the peak of the state’s coronavirus outbreak was still about two weeks away.” Better just not to know how many people are going to die. The Ohio government is asking employers to report workers who refuse to return to work because of safety concerns so the state can take away their unemployment benefits. Iowa issued a similar warning to workers: Risk your life or lose your benefits… Trump signed an executive order declaring meatpacking plants “critical infrastructure” so that they stay open, even though there are now 10,000 covid-19 cases associated with such plants; workers at 170 facilities in 29 states have tested positive. But the president is getting personally involved to make sure there are enough burgers at Wendy’s.

It’ll be fine. This time people will just keep working through the virus, and if they drop dead on the job well that’s a hospital bed saved.

If we throw open the doors of every business, we’ll almost certainly see a second wave of infections — one that could be even worse than what we’re experiencing now — and then we’ll just have to close down all over again.

No we’ll work through the pain.

We’re moving toward an utterly horrifying partisan divide, in which Democrats want to contain the virus so that we’re able to get the economy back on its feet, while Republicans decide that the only brave and manly thing to do is to stop worrying about the virus and “get back to normal” immediately, no matter how many Americans it kills. In fact, we may soon reach the point where dismissing all those deaths is precisely how you show your loyalty to Trump.

In short – you think it’s bad now? You just wait.

Speaking of how heeding medical advice makes Macho Men feel weak…

There you go. Not wanting to die gasping for air in an ICU equals you’re SCARED, you’re AFRAID, you’re a COWARD and a WEAKLING and UNAMERICAN.

The Denver Post has more:

A Castle Rock restaurant saw big crowds Sunday when it fully reopened for Mother’s Day in open defiance of the statewide public health order that limits restaurants to takeout and delivery services.

Customers packed C&C Coffee and Kitchen on Trail Boss Drive on Sunday, filling the restaurant’s tables, its patio and forming a line out the door for dine-in service.

That’ll show that god damn Democrat liberal Obama-loving corona virus!

C&C Coffee and Kitchen owner April Arellano also did not immediately return a request for comment Sunday, but a Twitter account for the restaurant said it was reopening to stand “for America, small businesses, the Constitution and against the overreach of our governor in Colorado!!”

And God, and Trump, and Putin, and staring into the sun during an eclipse, and pussy-grabbing, and forced pregnancy, and MAGA!