KAMALA HARRIS: I believe that Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator. He admires strong men and he gets played by them, because he thinks that they're his friends and they are manipulating him full time--and manipulating him by flattery and with favor. And so in the midst, to your point, as reported by Bob Woodward, in the height of the pandemic, and remember, people were dying by the hundreds. Everybody was scrambling to get these kits, the tests, the COVID test kits. Couldn't get them anywhere.
HOWARD STERN: Right.
KAMALA HARRIS: And this guy who is president of the United States is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator for his personal use.
TW: Democracy is bigger than winning an election. You shake hands and then you try and do everything you can to help the other side win. To deny what happened on January 6, the first time in American history that a President or anyone tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power. And here we are four years later in the same boat. When this is over, we need to shake hands and the winner needs to be the winner. This has got to stop. It's tearing our country apart.
TRUMP: Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before. We had the greatest economy. We got hit with a pandemic. And the pandemic was, not since 1917 where 100 million people died has there been anything like it? We did a phenomenal job with the pandemic. We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. We made ventilators for the entire world. We got gowns. We got masks.
HARRIS: First of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%, the work that we've done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was gonna do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it.
Q: So you maintain Bidenomics is a success.
HARRIS: I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost--of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000; when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%; I'll say that that's good work. There's more to do, but that's good work.
Although Ms Harris's promise to crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions in the food industry that lead to less competition and higher prices is unobjectionable, in reality it is little more than a restatement of America's existing anti-monopoly policy. The Federal Trade Commission is, for instance, currently embroiled in a legal battle to block the biggest supermarket merger in American history.
These tax cuts would not come in isolation, however. America's budget deficit is running at about 7% of GDP, a level previously associated with wars or recessions, while the national debt is continuing to climb higher. Neither of the candidates has offered any serious proposals about how to clean up the country's fiscal picture, and would in all likelihood make it worse.
Republicans increasingly objected to and tried rolling back Walz's emergency powers, and protesters chafed at his stay-at-home orders. But Walz's approach--which combined near-constant public visibility with stubbornly defying political and business pressure to reopen before the vaccine rollout--ultimately paid off: by June 2021, Minnesota had a lower death rate from COVID than any surrounding state, at 136 deaths per 100,000. For Iowa and North Dakota, governed by Trump-emulating anti-restriction Republicans, that figure was 194 and 200, respectively.
Bipartisan cooperation became tougher during his second year as he used the governor's emergency power during the COVID-19 pandemic to shutter businesses and close schools. Republicans pushed back and forced out some agency heads. Republicans also remain critical of Walz over what they see as his slow response to sometimes violent unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Things got easier for Walz in his second term, after he defeated Republican Scott Jensen, a physician known nationally as a vaccine skeptic. Democrats gained control of both legislative chambers, clearing the way for a more liberal course in state government, aided by a huge budget surplus.
TRUMP: Because the tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we've ever seen just prior to COVID, and even after COVID. It was so strong that we were able to get through COVID much better than just about any other country. Now, the corporate tax was cut down to 21% from 39%, plus beyond that, we took in more revenue with much less tax and companies were bringing back trillions of dollars back into our country. The country was going like never before. We were ready to start paying down debt.
BIDEN: [Taxing] a 1,000 billionaires would raise $500 billion dollars. We'd be able to wipe out his debt.
TRUMP: Because the tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we've ever seen just prior to COVID, and even after COVID.
Q: [To Biden]: So far, your administration has approved $4.3 trillion in new debt.
BIDEN: We have a thousand billionaires in America. And what's happening? They're in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2% in taxes. If they just paid 24% or 25%, either one of those numbers, they'd raise $500 billion dollars in a 10-year period. We'd be able to right wipe out his debt. We'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do--childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system.
"Biden's number is accurate: the US economy added 12.1 million jobs between Biden's first full month in office, February 2021, and January 2023. That number is indeed higher than the number of jobs added in any previous four-year presidential term. However, it's important to note that Biden took office in an unusual pandemic context that makes meaningful comparison to other periods very difficult."
Adding figures since then, The Guardian wrote on 2/2/24, "The US added 2.7m jobs last year even as the Fed drove interest rates up to a 22-year high." And CNN adds on 3/7/24, "Economists expect that US employers added 200,000 jobs last month". That totals to 15 million jobs.
When the last Administration gave out pandemic aid to small businesses, they designed it to favor the well-off and the well-connected who had concierge service with big banks, while underserved entrepreneurs like women-, veteran-, and minority-owned small businesses were put at the back of the line or even out the door. Just one month into office, the Biden-Harris Administration changed that, instituting a 14-day period during which only businesses with fewer than 20 employees could apply for relief. Research shows these reforms helped increase loans to small businesses in low to moderate income communities by 62 percent and expanded lending to the smallest businesses by 35 percent.
HALEY: Well, I think we saw it exacerbated by COVID. One in three people right now suffer from mental health issues, but if treated, they can live a perfectly normal life. The problem is we don't have enough mental health therapists. We don't have enough mental health treatment centers. We don't have enough addiction centers. And if you happen to be lucky enough to get one of those three, insurance doesn't cover it.
Q: What would you do to fix it?
HALEY: We need to have more Telehealth, so that people can get the mental health care they need right when they need it. We need to have mental health counselors in schools so they can identify when a child has a problem. But right now, we've got to get access to care. And that's why I want to move those federal programs down to the state level, because states know they need more mental health support.
"I'm Vivek Ramaswamy and I approve this message. The mainstream media is trying to rig the Iowa GOP caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control. Don't fall for their trick. They don't want you to hear from me: about the truth of what really happened on Jan.6; the truth about the COVID origin; the Hunter Biden laptop story; and everything else they have lied to you about. You can fix that. Take your remote"--[clicks a remote; screen blinks to black]--"and turn this s--- off."
[Daily Beast analysis: "A campaign spokesperson said"], "The network takes it upon themselves to disrespect Iowa voters and the caucuses by holding a debate and excluding Vivek when his polling clearly qualified for the stage." To qualify, Ramaswamy needed to hit at least 10% support in 3 separate polls meeting CNN's standards--which were more stringent than the RNC's for previous debates.
And then we're going to go and take as many federal programs as we can and send them down to the states. That will reduce the size of the federal government, but it will empower people on the ground. Think health care. Think welfare. Think education -- if we started doing that.
PENCE: Well, I think what's in part to blame is the Democrats been talking about defunding the police for the last five years. And we ought to be funding law enforcement, particularly in our major cities at unprecedented levels. And yet Democrats and liberal prosecutors in major metropolitan areas continue to work out their fanciful agendas, to do bail reform and go easy. What we need is strong commitment to law enforcement. We need leadership in Washington, D.C., that will marshal the resources of the states, marshal the resources of the American people. But when I'm president, we're going to extend those tax cuts. And we're going to block grant funding back to the states with a growing economy and educational choice and law enforcement. We will bring our cities back.
Asked about the impact that would have on American households and the interruption in pay and benefits for millions of Americans, Oliver argued the country has been put into a "no-win situation, because we've been spent into a $32 trillion debt."
"It's like alcoholism," he said. "If you take the bottle out of the alcoholic's hand, they're going to detox…. But, over time, the body will heal itself. We have to balance our budget now and get spending under control. Because, if we don't, it only gets worse … and eventually will have a bad outcome for our economy."
In January, Biden announced several new immigration policies, including an increase of the use of expedited removal, the tripling of refugee resettlement from the Western Hemisphere, increasing humanitarian assistance in Mexico and Central America, and a surge in resources to the U.S.-Mexico border.
He has also introduced a policy crackdown last month that could disqualify a vast majority of migrants from being able to seek asylum at the southern border, sparking criticism from some progressives.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently knocked Biden's immigration policies: "It's not racist or insensitive to say that we need to close our borders and have an orderly immigration policy," he said.
And it's time for us to stop being reactionary to China and start actually being aggressive and letting China know what we expect of them.
A Rochester physician and DFL activist [summarized] that the COVID-19 pandemic was the most profound health care crisis the country has faced in a century, and Gov. Walz and his team provided "leadership in uncertain times": "The governor made tough but necessary choices to limit the spread of the disease. We will never know who didn't die because of the Walz administration's efforts--whose parent or whose child (didn't die). That is the challenge of public health."
DFL supporters contrasted Walz's record with the comments by Jensen, who has compared public health measures to limit the spread of the disease as akin to Kristallnacht, when Nazis in Germany torched synagogues and vandalized Jewish homes.
Middle-class and working families shouldn't have to pay more than 7% of their income for care of young children. My plan will cut the cost in half for most families and help parents, including millions of women, who left the workforce during the pandemic because they couldn't afford child care, to be able to get back to work.
Right now in state after state, new laws are being written. Not to protect the vote, but to deny it. Not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it, not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost. Instead of looking at election results from 2020 and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections.
It's wrong. It's undemocratic, and frankly, it's un-American.
[Comments and poll in response to H.R.6304, the "Stop Federal Vaccine Mandates for Employees Act," which says "No emergency standard may require any drug or vaccine or other biological product to be administered to any employee." See H.R. 6304 for Congressional response]
Vaccination requirements are good for the economy. They not only increase vaccination rates but they help send people back to work--as many as 5 million American workers. They make our economy more resilient and keep our businesses open. [See H.R. 6304 for Congressional response]
BIDEN: The vast majority of the experts, including Wall Street, are suggesting that it's highly unlikely that it's going to be long-term inflation that's going to get out of hand. There will be near-term inflation, because everything is now trying to be picked back up.
Q: You seem pretty confident that inflation is temporary, but you're pumping all of this money into the economy. Couldn't that add to--
BIDEN: Moody's said if we pass the other two things I'm trying to get done, we will reduce inflation, because we're going to be providing good opportunities and jobs for people who are going to be reinvesting that money back in all the things we're talking about, driving down prices, not raising prices.
20 million Americans lost their job in the pandemic, working and middle class Americans. At the same time, roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion, in the same exact period. Let me say that again: 650 people increased their wealth by more than $1 trillion during this pandemic. And they're now worth more than $4 trillion. Trickle down economics has never worked, and it's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.
Our public schools should have reopened months ago. Other countries' did. Private and religious schools did. Science has shown for months that schools are safe. But too often, powerful grown-ups set science aside. And kids like me were left behind. The clearest case for school choice in our lifetimes.
Original sin is never the end of the story. Not in our souls, and not for our nation. The real story is always redemption. I am standing here because my mom has prayed me through some very tough times. I believe our nation has succeeded the same way. Because generations of Americans, in their own ways, have asked for grace--and God has supplied it.
PROMISE KEPT: (CNN, March 6, 2021): [In the stimulus plan]: Both the Senate and House bills would provide nearly $130 billion to K-12 schools to help students return to the classroom. The bills are in line with what Biden proposed. Altogether, $170 billion would be authorized for K-12 schools and higher education. Last year, Congress approved a total of $112 billion between two relief packages that went to K-12 schools and colleges.
PROMISE BROKEN: (CNN March 6, 2021): Unlike Biden's initial proposal, neither bill would reinstate mandatory paid family and sick leave approved in a previous Covid relief package. But they continue to provide tax credits to employers who voluntarily choose to offer the benefit through October 1.
OnTheIssues ANALYSIS: Paid family and sick leave is mandated in 10 states: CA, CO, CT, DC, MA, NJ, NY, OR, RI, and WA.
PROMISE KEPT: (CNN, March 6, 2021): [In the stimulus plan]: The bills would also provide about $39 billion to child care providers. The amount a provider receives would be based on operating expenses and is available to pay employees and rent, help families struggling to pay the cost, and purchase personal protective equipment and other supplies.
PROMISE KEPT: (CNN 3/6/21): The Senate bill allocates $8.5 billion to help struggling rural hospitals and health care providers.
White House Press Release: (8/13/2021): [The $8.5B will go towards]:
PROMISE KEPT: (CNN March 6, 2021): The Senate version calls for providing a $300 federal boost to weekly jobless payments and extending two key pandemic unemployment benefits programs through September 6. The agreement would also make the first $10,200 worth of benefits payments tax-free for households with annual incomes less than $150,000.
OnTheIssues ANALYSIS: The extended unemployment benefits under previous legislation was scheduled to end in mid-March [and may get extended again beyond September 6]. The unemployment benefit applies to independent contractors, who are normally ineligible for unemployment.
Our efforts saved lives. In fact, 40 states have suffered higher COVID mortality for seniors aged 65+ on a per capita basis than Florida. The cases and hospitalizations for seniors in Florida have plummeted as vaccinations have increased. Florida was right to prioritize the elderly. Seniors First works.
The bill also delivers immediate relief to workers and families bearing the brunt of the public health and economic crises, by providing eligible Americans with a $1,400 payment in addition to the $600 payment provided in December of 2020.
The bill also expands the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit on an emergency basis, extends key emergency unemployment benefits, raises the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and stabilizes pensions for Americans who participate in multi-employer pension plans. [See details of ARPA]
We must meet the new moment accelerating global challenges--from the pandemic to the climate crisis to nuclear proliferation--challenging the will only to be solved by nations working together and in common. We can't do it alone. We must start with diplomacy rooted in America's most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.
That's the grounding wire of our global power. That's our inexhaustible source of strength. That's America's abiding advantage.
PROMISE KEPT:(Executive Order on Medicare 1/28/21): It is the policy of my Administration to protect and strengthen Medicaid and the ACA and to make high-quality healthcare accessible and affordable for every American. In light of the exceptional circumstances caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, establish a Special Enrollment Period for uninsured and under-insured Americans to seek coverage through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace.
OnTheIssues ANALYSIS: Biden made his promise at the beginning of the pandemic, and all healthcare policy in 2021 is tied up with the pandemic. Biden has largely restored ObamaCare cuts--by reopening ACA enrollment--and largely subsidized ObamaCare--via pandemic spending and pandemic justification.
PROMISE KEPT: (Executive Order on Mask-Wearing, 1/20/21): The heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall immediately take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to require compliance with CDC guidelines with respect to wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, & other public health measures by: on-duty or on-site Federal employees; on-site Federal contractors; and all persons in Federal buildings or on Federal lands.
OnTheIssues ANALYSIS: "Mask mandates" are a core political issue at the state level: whether to mandate masks for state employees (as Biden has done for federal employees), versus for the public at-large (which Biden has not done).
PROMISE KEPT: (CNN March 6, 2021): The Senate bill amends the House bill on the $1,400-per-person stimulus payments to tighten eligibility. Individuals earning less than $75,000 a year and married couples earning less than $150,000 will receive $1,400 per person, including children. That will get money to about 90% of households.
ANALYSIS by en.as.com: (July 23, 2021): In total, an enormous 478 million stimulus check payments have been sent out since the start of the pandemic [with the third round underway] at $1,400 per person.
BIDEN: This HEROES Act has been sitting there. And look at what's happening. When I was in charge of the recovery act with $800 billion, I was able to get $145 billion to local and communities that have to balance their budgets. [If they cannot], then they have to fire firefighters, teachers, first responders, law enforcement officers, so they could keep their cities and counties running. They have not done a thing for them. And Mitch McConnell said, "Let them go bankrupt. Let them go bankrupt."
BIDEN: By the way, all you teachers out there, "not that many of you are going to die, so don't worry about it. So don't worry about it." Come on!
TRUMP: 99.9% of young people recover. We have to recover. We can't close up our nation. We have to open our schools and we can't close up our nation, or you're not going to have a nation.
BIDEN: He says that we're learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it. And you say, "I take no responsibility."
TRUMP: I take full responsibility. It's not my fault that it came here. It's China's fault. They kept it from going into the rest of China for the most part, but they didn't keep it from coming out to the world, including Europe and ourselves. But when I closed, he said, "This is a terrible thing, you're xenophobic." I think [Biden] called me racist even, because I was closing it to China. Now he says I should have closed it earlier.
Q: What do you say to Americans who are fearful that the cost of shutdowns?
BIDEN: What I would say is, I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country.
BIDEN: If you're going to open a business, have social distancing. If you have a restaurant, you need to have plexiglass dividers. You need to take testing rapidly. You need to be able to trace. You need to be able to provide all the resources that are needed to do this. That is going to make sure that we're going to open safely.
TRUMP: We have to open our country. We can't keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy. People are losing their jobs. They're committing suicide. There's depression, alcohol, drugs at a level that nobody's ever seen before. He'll close down the country if one person in our bureaucracy says we should close it down.
TRUMP: 99.9% of young people recover. We have to recover. We can't close up our nation. We have to open our schools and we can't close up our nation, or you're not going to have a nation.
BIDEN: We're about to go into a dark winter, and he has no clear plan. He says that we're learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it. You folks home will have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning. That man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch, there out of habit, where their wife or husband was, is gone. Learning to live with it. Come on. We're dying with it, because he's never said. See, you said, "It's dangerous." When's the last time? Is it really dangerous still? Are we dangerous. You tell the people it's dangerous now. What should they do about the danger? And you say, "I take no responsibility."
Q: What do you say to Americans who are fearful that the cost of shutdowns, the impact on the economy outweighs the risk of exposure to the virus?
BIDEN: What I would say is, I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country. It's [President Trump's] ineptitude that caused the country to have to shut down in large part, why businesses have gone under, why schools are closed.
Q: But you haven't ruled out more shut downs?
BIDEN: I'm not shutting down today, but you need standards. If you have a community that's above a certain level, everybody says, "Slow up. More social distancing. Do not open bars and do not open gymnasiums." But when you do open, give the people the capacity to open safely. For example, schools. They need a lot of money to be open. They need to deal with ventilation systems. They need to deal with smaller classes, more teachers.
TRUMP: We had the greatest economy in the history of our country last year, including the state of Florida. In Pennsylvania, in North Carolina, in Ohio, every place. We had the greatest economy we ever had. We had to close it down, we saved two million lives. We're opening it up. We have a V-shape and it's coming back. It's coming back very fast.
BIDEN: I suggested that we should be seeking access to the source of the problem. Trump never pushed that.
Q [to TRUMP]: Why did you only put in place a travel ban from China?
TRUMP: I put it in very early. Joe Biden was two months behind me, and he called me xenophobic and racist.
BIDEN: All the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China. There were 44 people on the ground [in China]. All those 44 people came home [as US citizens despite the ban on non-citizens]. In addition to that, I pointed out that I thought in February, I did a piece for USA Today saying, "This is a serious problem." Trump denied it. He said it wasn't. He missed enormous opportunities and kept saying things that weren't true. "It's going to go away by Easter"; "When the summer comes, it's all going to go away like a miracle." He's still saying those things.
TRUMP: I did put it in very early. Joe Biden was two months behind me, and he called me xenophobic and racist, because I put it in. And it turned out that I was 100% right. I also put it on Europe, very early, because I saw there was a lot of infection in Europe. The news doesn't get out the right answer, because I put on a travel ban far earlier than Dr. Fauci thought it was necessary. I was actually the only one that wanted to put it on. I put it on at the end of January. When I put on the travel ban Joe Biden, and others, said, "This is ridiculous. You don't do that." Well, Dr. Fauci said, I saved thousands and thousands of lives.
BIDEN: All the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China.In February, I did a piece for USA Today saying, "This is a serious problem." Trump denied it. He said it wasn't.
PENCE: I couldn't be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands without apology for the sanctity of human life. I'm pro-life. I don't apologize for it, & this is another one of those cases where there's such a dramatic contrast. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support taxpayer funding of abortion all the way up to the moment of birth. Late term abortion. They want to increase funding to Planned Parenthood of America.
PENCE: China is to blame for the coronavirus. President Trump stood up to China that had been taking advantage of America for decades in the wake of Joe Biden's cheerleading for China. President Trump made that decision before the end of January to suspend all travel from China. The American people deserve to know Joe Biden opposed President Trump's decision to suspend all travel from China.
PENCE: Under President Trump's leadership, Operation Warp Speed, we believe we'll have literally tens of millions of doses of a vaccine before the end of this year. The reality is, when you look at the Biden plan, it reads an awful lot like what our task force has been doing every step of the way. I think the American people know that this is a president who has put the health of America first.
What really is a threat to the suburbs is [Trump's] failure to deal with COVID. His failure to deal with the environment; they're being flooded, & burned out, because his refusal to do anything. That's why the suburbs are in trouble.
Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote. Vote whatever way is the best way for you. He cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election. When the votes are all counted, that will be accepted. If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that'll be accepted. If in fact he says, he's not sure what he's going to accept, let me tell you something, it doesn't matter, because if we get the votes, it's going to be all over. He's going to go. He can't stay in power. It won't happen.
TRUMP: We would have lost far more people, far more people.
BIDEN: His own CDC Director says we could lose as many as another 200,000 people between now and the end of the year. And he said, if we just wear a mask, we can save half those numbers. Just a mask.
BIDEN: COVID-19 proves how vital it is to give people who want to live at home a chance to stay there. I'm going to invest $450 billion so more Americans can choose to live at home if they want to. We're going to give family caregivers, the really quiet heroes out there, the support they deserve. We're going to create a $5,000 tax credit for informal [family] caregivers.
Q: And for seniors?
BIDEN: Medicare is a lifeline for around 60 million Americans. Under the Affordable Care Act, we strengthened Medicare. We extended the life of the trust fund by bending the cost curve. We expanded free preventative services like mammograms and colonoscopies, and we closed the doughnut hole so more seniors could afford their prescriptions. We've got to give Medicare the power, for example, to negotiate drug prices.
BIDEN: I think COVID safety is a problem no matter where people are if they don't have masks on. The context of praising people who protest peacefully, is--there was a question of right to speak, not to loot, not to burn, not to do anything that causes damage. The right to speak out makes sense, but there is a big difference between people walking, moving along, and people sitting down cheek to jowl, shoulder to shoulder, a thousand of them breathing on one another indoors.
BIDEN: First of all, in the middle of this pandemic, what is the President doing? He's in Federal Court--Federal Court trying to do away with the Affordable Care Act. What I would do is reinstate the Affordable Care Act and add a public option. So would go without being able to be covered for what they need. Healthcare is an absolute right.
BIDEN: We should have national standards laid so people can go to work safely. That requires us to have rapid testing, the protective gear, some Federal funding, particularly kids going back to school, making sure there's testing and tracing. There's a whole range of things we should have done. The President disregarded it. So there's a lot of empty chairs, and it's got to stop.
Q: Could you see a scenario where you downplayed critical information so as not to cause panic?
BIDEN: Not at all. If he had just acted one month, one week earlier, he would have saved 37,000 lives. But he knew it. He knew it and did nothing. It is close to criminal.
TRUMP: They're doing well.
Q: But we've only gotten half the jobs back.
TRUMP: Stocks are owned by everybody. They talk about the stock market is so good, that's 401(k)s. As long as they didn't sell when the market went down, if people held onto their stocks, people that aren't wealthy have done well because of the stock market. I've set records on the stock market even during the pandemic. And that doesn't happen by accident. If Joe Biden ever got this position--and that's a headwind on the stock market-- our stock market would be much higher if it weren't for that [pandemic]. If Joe Biden ever got in, I think you'd have a depression the likes of which we have never seen in this country.
TRUMP: Without question, I would say, because things were going so well, the whole COVID, the China virus, as I call it, because it comes from China, I think it's a much more accurate term.
It's been very difficult; it's been so sad. We will get there, it's going to happen. But nobody's seen anything like probably since 1917.
Q: What did you learn from it?
TRUMP: I learned that life is very fragile, because [even with] strong people, all of a sudden they were dead. And it wasn't their fault. It was the fault of a country that could have stopped it. And I made a great deal with China. I feel so differently about that [China trade] deal. I don't view it the same way because of the horror of this disease, that could have been stopped at the border.
Q: Could you have done more to stop it?
TRUMP: I don't think so. I think what I did by closing up the country, I saved lives. I think we did a very good job.
TRUMP: It is going to disappear. It's going to disappear, I still say it.
Q: But not if we don't take action, correct?
TRUMP: No, I still say it. It's going to disappear. I want to see people, and you want to see people. I want to see football games. I'm pushing very hard for Big Ten, I want to see Big Ten open. Let them play sports.
TRUMP: We're very proud of the job we've done, and we've saved a lot of lives, a tremendous number of lives.
Q: We have 4% of the world's population, more than 20% of the cases, more than 20% of the deaths.
TRUMP: We have 20% of the cases because of the fact that we do much more testing. If we wouldn't do testing you wouldn't have cases. You would have very few cases.
The plan was passed on to Donald Trump's incoming administration. The office was shut down in 2018 by Pres. Donald Trump, who disbanded the pandemic response team.
On Jan. 28, 2020, Carter Mecher, Senior Medical Advisor for the Department of Veterans Affairs, warned others [about coronavirus] that, "Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad." Mecher was one of the medical advisers who, in 2006, had conceived for George W. Bush a pandemic response strategy of "social distancing." He started to push for immediate social distancing. Ignoring that and other scientists' requests or emphasis on testing, Trump and his administration decided the best strategy would be to keep infected people in China.
BIDEN: I'm going to ask every governor to step up. This isn't about freedom; it's about freedom for your neighbors. It's about a patriotic responsibility to protect your neighbors. The only way you can do that is to be socially distanced and wearing a mask when you're in public, when you're outside. This is the first time I've ever heard people say that doing something patriotic you can save other people's lives, impacts on their freedom. Give me a break; this is about saving lives.
Q: Would you be prepared to shut this country down again?
BIDEN: I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. That is the fundamental flaw of this administration's thinking. In order to keep the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus. I would shut it down, I would listen to the scientists.
BIDEN: I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. That is the fundamental flaw of this administration's thinking to begin with. In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus. I would shut it down, I would listen to the scientists.
HARRIS: There are different needs based on different communities and that's why we talk about the need to track actually racial disparities -- disparities based on region, geographic region and do that now. So that when we have a vaccine, those communities that are most in need, will get them. That policy and that approach will be guided by the public health experts, unlike what we have seen now which are the politics guiding a public health crisis.
BIDEN: I don't blame him for the COVID crisis. I blame him for walking away and not dealing with the solutions. Columbia University Medical School said if he had acted just one week earlier, he would have saved over 37,000 lives, 37,000 fewer people would have not passed away. Two weeks earlier over 50,000 people. This is about telling the American people the truth, letting the scientists speak, listening to the science and stepping out of the way.
I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn't support me as I will for those who did. That's the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment. America isn't just a collection of clashing interests of red states or blue states. We're so much bigger than that. We're so much better than that.
[In response], "Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the U.S. Postal Service is suspending operational changes, like removing mail processing equipment and collection boxes, until after the November election," the Wall Street Journal reports. From a statement: "To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded."
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the Postal Service is suspending operational changes, like removing mail processing equipment and collection boxes, until after the November election. The agency won't change retail hours at post offices across the country or close any mail-sorting facilities. Overtime hours will continue to be approved as needed to process mail.
From a statement: "To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded." (Aug. 18, PoliticalWire)
Most of those paths would have required no effort on his part. All he would have had to do was make a couple of phone calls, give a speech or two, then delegate everything else.
Why did it take so long for Donald to act? In part, because like my grandfather, he has no imagination. The pandemic didn't have to immediately do with him, and managing the crisis in every moment doesn't help him promote his preferred narrative that no one has ever done a better job than he has.
Donald didn't drag his feet in December 2019, in January, in February, in March because of his narcissism; he did it because of his fear of appearing weak or failing to project the message that everything was "great", "beautiful", and "perfect." The irony is that his failure to face the truth has inevitability led to massive failure anyway. In this case, the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be lost, and the economy of the richest country in history may be destroyed. Donald will acknowledge none of this, moving the goal posts to hide the evidence and convincing himself in the process that he's done a better job than anybody else could have if only a few hundred thousand die instead of two million.
Donald's initial response to COVID-19 underscores his need to minimize negativity at all cost. Fear--the equivalent of weakness in our family--is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old. When Donald is in the most trouble, superlatives are no longer enough; both the situation and the reactions to it must be unique, even if absurd or nonsensical. On his watch, "Nobody could have predicted" a pandemic that his own Department of Health and Human Services was running simulations for just a few months before COVID-19 struck in Washington State. Why does he do this? Fear.
As we move into the next phase of managing the pandemic and consider President Trump's guidelines for "Opening Up America Again," we are applying our propensity for planning to reopen the segments of our economies that temporarily closed. Each of us has identified triggers for when regions of our states and sectors of our economies should reopen, based on metrics tailored to our unique circumstances. We are sharing expertise and best practices on how to safely reopen restaurants, churches, gyms and other businesses while continuing to slow the spread of infection.
As we move into the next phase of managing the pandemic and consider President Trump's guidelines for "Opening Up America Again," we are applying our propensity for planning to reopen the segments of our economies that temporarily closed. Each of us has identified triggers for when regions of our states and sectors of our economies should reopen, based on metrics tailored to our unique circumstances. We are sharing expertise and best practices on how to safely reopen restaurants, churches, gyms and other businesses while continuing to slow the spread of infection.
Snopes 7/13/20: One of the conspiracy theories that have plagued attempts to keep people informed during the pandemic is the idea that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory. Scientists who have studied the virus agree that it evolved naturally and crossed into humans from an animal species, most likely a bat. How exactly do we know that this virus, SARS-CoV-2, has a zoonotic animal origin and not an artificial one? The answers lie in the genetic material and evolutionary history of the virus, and understanding the ecology of the bats in question.
Sanders said that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic had hastened his decision to suspend his campaign, saying that continuing his presidential bid would only distract from efforts to combat the outbreak and damage it has done to the U.S. economy.
Sanders vowed to push forward with Medicare for All, saying the coronavirus is leading "millions" of laid off Americans to lose their health insurance. "In terms of health care, this current, horrific crisis that we are now in has exposed for all to see how absurd our current employer-based health insurance system is," he said. "We have always believed that health care must be considered as a human right, not an employee benefit, and we are right."
For the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has elected to rely on the volunteerism of the private sector to obtain additional personal protective equipment, virus test kits and hospital equipment. He and his advisers have argued that using the act has been unnecessary, given the outpouring of support from large and small American companies that are retooling their factories to make masks, ventilators and gloves.
'It should be VERY BIG & BOLD, Two Trillion Dollars, and be focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once great infrastructure of our Country! Phase 4.'
BIDEN: We may get there. I don't want to go that far ahead. But that is possible. I think we should be looking to all-mail ballots across the board to begin with because it's an easier way for people to vote. But whether or not that's required across the board in all 50 states and territories, I'm not sure yet. I think we can make that. But we should be beginning to plan that in each of our states.
BIDEN: Medical experts indicate to me that it's more likely to be sometime into June, before we'd be in that position. But nobody knows for certain. What we do know is that it's a false choice to make, saying that either open the economy or everything goes to hell, or, in fact, you take care of the medical side. You cannot make this economy grow until you deal with the virus and that curve. You can't deal with the economic crisis until you deal with the health care crisis.
Q: When our savings account inevitably runs out due to him not being able to work right now, what is it that we sacrifice?
BIDEN: You should not have to sacrifice anything, not just because it's the fair thing for you be taken care of. You should not have to pay a penny for testing. You will be covered. Anything related to the cost of the coronavirus health care should be free, paid for out of the federal funds.
We should be using the Defense Production Act to do whatever we need to do, whether it's the rapidity with which testing has to take place that you get a result, to actually getting the tests done, to investing in whether or not you have protective gear for our first responder
BIDEN: No. But every single day, I speak to all five of my grandkids either on my phone, or I text with them. Two of them, Beau's children, live a mile as a crow flies from our home. We sit on our back porch and they sit out on the lawn with two chairs there, and we talk about being home from school, and who's driving whom crazy, and so on and so forth, but at least I get to see them.
Q: What should President Trump do differently regarding coronavirus?
When he talks to governors, he says, be careful when you talk to that governor, they're not very good, or calls another governor a snake. This is not personal. It has nothing to do with you, Donald Trump, nothing to do with you. Do your job. Stop personalizing everything. One of the governors I spoke to, when they called and asked for help in terms of masks and other things, the president allegedly told her that, no, you take care of yourself. That's not my responsibility.
A factor limiting the Trump administration's ability to implement the pandemic playbook was that the document never underwent interagency vetting, despite former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert expressing interest in making it a permanent fixture when it came to pandemics. Bossert, who left the administration in 2018, told Politico that he "engaged actively with my outgoing counterpart and took seriously their transition materials and recommendations on pandemic preparedness."
Amid a global pandemic Trump and his team have prioritized fossil fuel production. The Interior Department is moving forward with fossil fuel lease sales, as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management offered up 78 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico despite environmental groups' calls to halt the sales. A spokesman for the bureau said the event was "live-streamed with only a handful of BOEM workers," with bids submitted either by mail or at the bureau's New Orleans office.
Voiceover: The warnings were there
Headline: Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded
Voice: Millions of Americans at risk
Text: 10 million Americans were expected to become ill
Voice: But Donald Trump failed to act
Video: Donald Trump smiling for interview
Text: Jan.22: 6 cases
Reporter: "Are you worried about a pandemic at this point?"
Trump: "No, not at all; we have it under control; it's gonna be just fine."
CNN headline 2/25: Top officials are warning that the spread of the coronavirus in the US appears "inevitable."
Text: Feb.26: 257 cases
Reporter: "Do you agree with that assessment?"
Trump: "Well I don't think it's 'inevitable.'"
Politico headline 2/28: On coronavirus fears: President Trump blaming the "fake news"
Trump: "This is their new hoax."
Text: Mar.3: 359 cases; more than 20 deaths
[Note: Trump sued over the use of the word "hoax," noting that it referred to the Democratic response, not the virus]
"I'm a businessperson, I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them," he added. In a press conference he denied knowing anything about the cuts in 2018 when questioned.
Sanders: Yes.
Q: Many believe those spending bills were a crucial part of stabilizing the economy back then. Would you support bailouts for industries that are being crushed by the Coronavirus outbreak now?
Sanders: I voted against the bailout because I believed that the illegal behavior being done by the people on Wall Street should not be rewarded by a bailout. And today, by the way, those banks are more prosperous and own more assets, by and large, than they did back then. They're bigger now than they were then. I thought at the time that in the midst of massive income and wealth inequality, the people on top [should pay for the] bail out. Joe [Biden] voted for that. I voted against it. But to answer your question where we are right now, we need to stabilize the economy, but we can't repeat what we did in 2008. Our job right now is to tell every working person in this country, "you are not going to suffer."
We have to have the best science in the world telling us what can stay open and what need be closed. Like I said earlier, the idea that we are closing schools, which I understand, but not being able to provide lunches for people who in fact need the school lunch program to get by.
I can understand the decision made to close places where a hundred or 50 people or more gather, but how do you deal with the things that necessarily have to be kept going and what's the way to do that? There should be a national standard for that. It should be coming out of the situation room right now.
With all due respect to Medicare for all, you have a single-payer system in Italy. It doesn't work there. It has nothing to do with Medicare for all. That would not solve the problem at all. We can take care of that right now by making sure that no one has to pay for treatment, period, because of the crisis. No one has to pay for whatever drugs are needed, period. No one has to pay for hospitalization. period. That is a national emergency, and that's how it's handled.
One of the reasons that we are unprepared and have been unprepared is we don't have a system. We got thousands of private insurance plans. That is not a system that is prepared to provide healthcare to all people. In a good year without the epidemic, we're losing up to 60,000 people who die every year because they don't get to a doctor on time. It's clearly this crisis is only making a bad situation worse.
Bernie Sanders: Well, first thing we have got to do, is to shut this president up right now, because he is undermining the doctors and the scientists who are trying to help the American people. It is unacceptable for him to be blabbering with unfactual information which is confusing the general public. Second of all, make sure that every person in this country finally understands that when they get sick with the coronavirus that all payments will be made, that they don't have to worry about coming up with money for testing. They don't have to worry about coming up with money for treatment. We have to make sure that our hospitals have the ventilators that they need, have the IC units that they need. Right now, we have a lack of medical personnel. Bottom line from an economic point of view, say to the American people, if you lose your job, you will be made whole. You're not going to lose income.
BIDEN: Anyone who shows up to be tested for Coronavirus, or gets Coronavirus treated, would be held harmless. There are certain things you cannot deport an undocumented person for and that would be one of them. We want that. It's in the interests of everyone. And those folks who are the xenophobic folks out there, it's even in their interest that that [infected person] come forward, because it keeps the spread from moving more rapidly.
Q: What about closing the Mexican border during the pandemic?
BIDEN: Our future rests upon the Latino community being fully integrated. If we do not invest in their future, everything that the xenophobes are concerned about will in fact get worse, not better. We should be embracing, bringing them in, just like what happened with the Irish immigrants after the famine, just what happened with the Italians, et cetera. We've been through this before, xenophobia is a disease.
TRUMP: I think people are viewing us as having done a very good job. Nobody is blaming us for the virus. People are now staying in the US, spending their money in the US, & I like that. You know, I've been after that for a long time. They've sort of been forced doing that. It's all going to work out. I just made a great China deal. China is paying us billions of dollars because of what I did to them with tariffs. I mean, to a point where my farmers are in love with me because I took some of that money and gave it to them.
Q: Do you care about the national debt?
TRUMP: I do. Very much. Now, the good thing about the debt is we're paying very little interest--almost nothing. In fact, I want to refinance the debt.
Q: So this would be a focus of a second term?
TRUMP: Oh, absolutely. Now, again, we were disturbed by what's going on with the virus, but that's going to be fine. But, you know, that was a disturbance.
And that's why we have only, right now, 11--it's a lot of people, but it's still 11 people--versus tremendous numbers of thousands of people that have died all over the world. We have 11. We have 149 cases, as of this moment. This morning, it was 129. So we were really given tremendous marks for having made the decision.
I don't blame anybody. I want to get everybody to understand: They made some decisions which were not good decisions. We inherited decisions that they made, and that's fine. We undid some of the regulations that were made that made it very difficult, but I'm not blaming anybody. We've done a great job.
TRUMP: As soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, "What's going on with China? How many people are coming in?" Nobody but me asked that question. And you know that I closed the borders very early. We've been given A-pluses for that. You know, it saved a lot of lives.
TRUMP: I love the people of this country. You can't be a politician and not shake hands. They want to shake your hand. They want to say hello. They want to hug you. They want to kiss you. I don't care. You have to do that. The bottom line is, I shake anybody's hand now. I'm proud of it. They're people that I love. They're people that I want to take care of. You're hearing a lot of stuff about "Try not to shake hands." It hasn't stopped me at all. It is a little bit of a problem, but I got over it.
BIDEN: What we did with Ebola--I was part of making sure that pandemic did not get to the United States, saved millions of lives. And what we did, we set up, I helped set up that office on pandemic diseases. We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. And our president today--and he's wiped all that out. [With Ebola], we did it; we stopped it.
Q: So, more funding?
BIDEN: I would immediately restore the funding. [Trump] cut the funding for CDC. He tried to cut the funding for NIH. He cut the funding for the entire effort. And here's the deal. I would be on the phone with China and making it clear, we are going to need to be in your country; you have to be open; you have to be clear; we have to know what's going on; we have to be there with you, and insist on it and insist, insist, insist. I could get that done. No one up here has ever dealt internationally with any of these world leaders. I'm the only one that has.
What do we have to do? Whether or not the issue is climate change, which is clearly a global crisis requiring international cooperation, or infectious diseases like Coronavirus, requiring international cooperation, we have to work and expand the World Health Organization.
Obviously, we have to make sure the CDC, the NIH, our infectious departments, are fully funded. This is a global problem. We've got to work with countries all the over the world to solve it.
"I think if you vote, you should go. Even the concept of early voting is not the greatest, because a lot of things happen," he said. But he emphasized "there's a lot of dishonesty going on with mail-in voting, mail-in ballots. Thousands of votes are gathered and dumped in a location and all of a sudden you lose elections that you think you win," Trump said. "I'm not going to stand for it."
SANDERS: Well, for start, I would not do what Trump has done and cut funding for those federal agencies which deal with infectious crises. We would put more money into research to make sure that we are best prepared to what I fear may be happening more and more frequently. And we've got to go to the best experts that we can. But we need a global response to this global crisis.
Q: Is cutting off access with China, is that wise?
SANDERS: I don't think you want to cut off access. I think you want to put up protocols to do our best to make sure that we take a look at anybody who is coming into this country, I suspect. But I don't know you have to stop travel from China.
[Prior to the Trump Administration], the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council (NSC) and another in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)--both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
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