Post inauguration Trump:

[Pies4shaw]

His delay looks to have condemned a couple of hundred thousand people to death. Why would anyone find fault with that?

[pietillidie]

^Yes, best to wait until people no longer feel they need to be supportive of an unhinged narcissist to save dying relatives.

Not only will people wake up to a massive death toll and mass job losses caused by denialism and incompetence, but also a pile of unproductive debt caused by idiotic billionaire tax cuts, vanity walls, a massive expansion in military spending, unprecedented trade destabilisation, and fed interference rooted in executive abuse.

Then again, it's easy to forget we're dealing with two different centuries in one country here. Perhaps the 1960s fantasists will vote for him again to stick it gay feminist vegans and pregnant teenage girls, as they did with George W. I. Who can be sure?

Way to go, Bankrupter-in-Chief.

[Jezza]

[watt price tully]

[pietillidie]

^It's getting hard to keep the story straight, apparently.

Jezza, if the Chinese leadership denied and obfuscated, and Trump denied and obfuscated, that ought to set off warning bells in your head. Callous, reckless, self-serving, corrupt, bumbling and authoritarian; I'd say that describes them both quite well.

Even worse, though, Trump had the chance to learn from China's mistakes and the threat still failed to register above his own peurile self interest. Just a catastrophe.

Why you'd hitch your wagon to that is beyond me.

[Pies4shaw]

Whatever has happened in China is irrelevant to Trump’s culpability. By my estimation, the US just ticked over 1,000,000 cases of COVID-19.

You don’t get 6,803 deaths from 270,000 cases in a functional health system. The true figure is likely to be well over 1,030,000, as I write.

[pietillidie]

PR stunts and mismanagement instead of serious action as the clock ticked:

[pietillidie]

Of course, there's always time for corrupt victimisation while people are dying:

[Pies4shaw]

From the Guardian earlier today (and, before reading, please note that the Guardian is not posting similarly about Morrison - it is a terrible thing when such things can be written about any leader):

The daily briefing has ended. Some key fact checks and falsehoods from Trump:

He falsely suggested the pandemic was not predictable when, in fact, the US intelligence community, public health experts and officials in Trump’s own administration had warned for years that the country was at risk from a pandemic, including specific warnings about a coronavirus outbreak.

He falsely said the testing in the US is “better” than any other country in the world. In fact, some of the initial coronavirus tests sent out to states were seriously flawed – some did not even work. The CDC had insisted it would manufacture the tests itself, creating further problems.

He tried to suggest that Obama’s handling of H1N1 was worse than his handling of Covid-19, when in fact Obama declared an emergency within two weeks of a first confirmed US case.

He falsely said airline passengers were getting tests upon landing, which is not true.

He attacked the inspector general report about testing shortage as politically motivated from an Obama appointee, when in reality, the official behind the report has had a long career with the non-partisan office.

He also said the country would open “sooner than people think”, even as health officials are warning of a gradual return from current restrictions.

I don't think the standard of probity expected of a world leader should be lower than the standard allowed for posts on a message board.

[think positive]

[Pies4shaw]

OK, then - they have now over 1.3M cases (updated with today's data) and no functioning health care system. That's going to end well.

[David]

^ That's worldwide, P4S – the US is, though, accounting for a sizeable proportion of it (367,000 at the last count I've found, which is nearly three times Spain's, the second place holder). They've also just passed 10,000 deaths.

[stui magpie]

[Pies4shaw]

[Wokko]