Health officials in the United States and around the world are trying to tackle a renewed increase in COVID-19 cases, with surges from China to Spain and Germany underscoring the difficulty of curbing the pandemic. And in Florida today, released data shows that Covid-19 infections in children has risen by 23 percent.
Despite the number of new cases and deaths in the U.S., Trump on Monday launched a fresh push to get states to quickly reopen their economies, even though he had praised governors last week for their social distancing measures and other executive actions.
“I really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they are not opening,” Trump told reporters Monday at an event in North Carolina, according to the Financial Post. “And we’ll see what happens with them.”
The inconsistencies in the messages coming out of Trump’s mouth are too numerous to count, numbering in the hundreds – and this even includes his about-face on wearing face masks. He spent last week trying to show Americans that after months of denial and indifference, he was now taking the virus seriously by allowing reporters to film him wearing a mask.
President @realDonaldTrump on Boat Parades and voter enthusiasm: “There's more spirit now than there's ever been for my campaign” pic.twitter.com/O92uXJVkOI
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) July 27, 2020
If anyone thought they were seeing a new, improved Trump, they were very wrong. He wears the mask only when it suits his photo-ops and not because he is trying to follow guidelines.
The bottom line to all this is really quite simple. Trump has only one timetable he is following – He has 99 days to convince followers that he is ready to be reelected. This is despite his reckless handling of the pandemic and in a much broader sense, his numerous lies, conspiracy theories, and downright corrupt behavior while in office.
In the very latest faux pas by Trump – he retweeted a video published by the right-wing outlet Breitbart News, in which a group of doctors make false claims about the virus, including one who says “you don’t need masks” because hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug pushed by the President, is a “cure in combination with several other drugs.”
The video, which went viral on YouTube, was later removed by Facebook and Twitter because it spread misinformation, according to The Hill.
“We’ve removed this video for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19,” Facebook Policy Communications Director Andy Stone said in a statement to The Hill.
