Trump Tweets and Golfs, but Makes No Mention of Virus’s Toll
NY TIMES, PETER BAKER
As President Trump’s motorcade pulled into his golf club in Virginia on an overcast Sunday, a small group of protesters waited outside the entrance. One held up a sign.
“I care do U?” it read. “100,000 dead.”
Mr. Trump and his advisers have said that he does, but he has made scant effort to demonstrate it this Memorial Day weekend. He finally ordered flags lowered to half-staff at the White House only after being badgered to do so by his critics and otherwise took no public notice as the American death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached a staggering 100,000.
While the country neared six digits of death, the president who repeatedly criticized his predecessor for golfing during a crisis spent the weekend on the links for the first time since March. When he was not zipping around on a cart, he was on social media embracing fringe conspiracy theories, amplifying messages from a racist and sexist Twitter account and lobbing playground insults at perceived enemies, including his own former attorney general.
This was a death toll that Mr. Trump once predicted would never be reached. In late February, he said there were only 15 coronavirus cases in the United States, understating even then the actual number, and declared that “the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” In the annals of the American presidency, it would be hard to recall a more catastrophically wrong prediction. Even after he later acknowledged that it would not be zero, he insisted the death toll would fall “substantially below the 100,000” mark.
As it stands now, the coronavirus has infected 1.6 million and taken so many lives it is as if an entire midsize American city — say Boca Raton, Fla., just to pick an example — simply disappeared. The toll is about to match the 100,000 killed in the United States by the pandemic of 1968 and is closing in on the outbreak of 1957-58, which killed 116,000. At this pace, it will stand as the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the great influenza of 1918-20 — all at the same time the nation confronts the most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression.
The historical comparisons are breathtaking. More Americans have died of the coronavirus in the last 12 weeks than died in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined and nearly twice as many as died of battle wounds during World War I. The death toll has nearly matched the number of people killed by the initial blasts of the world’s first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of American deaths, it is the equivalent of 22 Iraq wars, 33 Sept. 11 attacks, 41 Afghanistan wars, 42 Pearl Harbors or 25,000 Benghazis.
Mr. Trump, who has been sharply criticized for a slow and initially ineffective response to the pandemic, focused on Sunday on the more recent progress, looking ahead, not behind. “Cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the Country!” he exulted on Twitter.
Even that was not completely true. While total new cases nationally have begun declining, hospitalizations outside New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have increased slightly in recent days, as Mr. Trump’s own former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, pointed out.
Altogether, cases are falling in 14 states and Washington, D.C., but holding steady in 28 states and Guam while rising in eight states plus Puerto Rico, according to a New York Times database. The American Public Health Association said the 100,000 milestone was a time to reinforce efforts to curb the virus, not abandon them.
“This is both a tragedy and a call to action,” it said in a statement. “Infection rates are slowing overall in the U.S., but with 1.6 million cases across the nation in the past four months, the outbreak is far from over. New hot spots are showing up daily, and rates remain steady in at least 25 states.”
The president’s critics said he would not be able to convince voters this fall that he should be celebrated for a death toll of 100,000 or more just because it could have been worse.
“It’s not the moving of the goal posts on loss of life that hurts Trump as much as the loss of life itself,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster and principal at the firm GBAO. “The facts are what worry people — majorities hold Trump responsible for high death tolls, high unemployment and a lack of testing. And even more now than a month ago.”
On a three-day weekend in a stay-home era, when gatherings posed risks and remembrances of the war dead vied with mourning for the nearly 100,000 Americans who had died of the virus, the politics of the pandemic burst into fresh view.
Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, did not wear masks, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged all Americans to wear them.
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, did wear a mask when he emerged in public on Monday for his first public appearance since mid-March, when he began campaigning from his home.
He and his wife, Jill Biden, both in black masks, laid a wreath at a veterans memorial in Delaware in an unannounced visit. “Thanks for your service,” Mr. Biden said, saluting a small group of veterans and other onlookers from a distance.
If the country’s losses were on his mind this weekend, Mr. Trump did a good job of hiding it. His Twitter feed was full of everything but that. He tweeted or retweeted messages falsely implying that “Psycho Joe Scarborough,” the MSNBC host, murdered an aide in 2001; suggesting that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has denture problems and likes to “drink booze on the job”; and declaring that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions “had no courage” and “ran for the hills” by recusing himself from the Russia investigation in 2017 as required by ethics rules.
Mr. Trump reposted eight tweets from John K. Stahl, a conservative who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in California in 2012. Mr. Stahl has a history of racist and sexist posts, especially against black women like Senator Kamala Harris of California (“Willie’s Ho”); Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor of Georgia (“Shamu”); and Joy Reid, the MSNBC host (“butt ugly” and a “skank”).
Imperial College London predicted last week that the relaxation of quarantine measures encouraged by Mr. Trump “will lead to resurgence of transmission” and that “deaths over the next two-month period could exceed current cumulative deaths by greater than twofold” — in other words, another 200,000 deaths by August.
As the nation reaches this macabre milestone, that is the grim worry: That it is not the last one. “To me,” Dr. Frieden said, “the most important question is are we going to do what we need to do to prevent the next 100,000?”
Tired of being inside, many people flock to beaches for the unofficial start of summer.
Memorial Day crowds flocked to beaches, amusement parks, lakes and boardwalks on Monday, on the first long weekend since the pandemic began to tear through the United States, taking almost 100,000 lives.
For many, the day was an attempt to turn the page from the grim shutdowns of the past months to something closer to the traditional beginning of summer. Still, the juxtaposition of past and present was at times jarring.
At beaches and seaside arcades even in states where infections remained on the rise, many did not wear masks and disregarded social distancing.
In Florida, near Daytona Beach, hundreds of people had to be rescued from the surf over the long weekend as huge crowds took over beaches in Volusia County.
Videos of partygoers enjoying the weekend at Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., and Ocean City, Md. — often with little more than sunscreen and bathing suits to separate them — dismayed and angered many on social media. But the mayor of one resort town in Missouri said nothing could stop the defiance of social-distancing guidelines, short of shutting down the whole area.
Even in places where the weather was rainy or overcast, a beach trip offered a chance at a feeling of normalcy.
In New York City, beaches were still closed to swimming, though most shorelines in the region were open. Still, the relatively cool weather and public safety measures — most beaches were operating at half-capacity, and many had limited their use to locals only — dampened the urge to pack the sand.
But many people simply stayed home, unlike in years past, when they gathered on stoops and in public parks to barbecue and toast the arrival of the warmer season.
Judge rules against Florida Republican-'Pay to Vote' law blocking felons from voting until they pay legal fees.
A federal judge in Tallahassee ruled on Sunday night that Florida law can't stop felons from voting because they can't pay back any legal fees and restitution they owe.The judge's decision could have deep ramifications as the state’s estimated 774,000 disenfranchised felons represent a significant voting bloc.
Florida is well known for razor-thin election margins, and many of those felons are people of colour and presumed to be Democrats, which could have a major impact on the 2020 election.
In 2018, Florida voters approved Amendment 4, restoring voting rights for felons in the state who have served their sentences.
A subsequent bill, passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, attempted to define what it means to complete a prison sentence, requiring felons to pay all fines, restitution and other legal financial obligations before their sentences can be considered fully served.
In a 125-page ruling, US District Judge Robert Hinkle called the law a “pay-to-vote system” saying that court fees are a tax, and that it creates a new system for determining whether felons are eligible to vote.
Acknowledging the partisan nature of the bill, during a trial earlier this month Hinkle asked during the state's closing argument: “Why is it all the Republicans voted yes, and all the Democrats voted no?”
“That was not a coincidence,” he said. “It would be stunning if somebody told me that they did not realise that African Americans tend to vote Democratic.”
The governor's office is reviewing the ruling. “The court recognised that conditioning a person's right to vote on their ability to pay is unconstitutional,” Ms Ebenstein wrote in an email. “This ruling means hundreds of thousands of Floridians will be able to rejoin the electorate and participate in upcoming elections.”
Convicted murderers and rapists remain permanently barred from voting, regardless of financial debts.
New York will pay death benefits for essential public workers who died fighting the virus.
New York’s state and local governments will provide death benefits to the families of essential workers who died fighting the virus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday.
The public employees whose families would receive death benefits included health workers, police officers, firefighters, transit workers and emergency medical workers, the governor said. The benefits would be paid out of state and local pension funds.
“We want to make sure that we remember them, and we thank our heroes of today, and they’re all around us,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily news briefing.
As people paused on Memorial Day to remember military personnel who died while serving the country, Mr. Cuomo linked the fallen service members to New York’s front-line workers, whom he called today’s “heroes.”
Mr. Cuomo also called on the federal government to provide funds to give hazard pay to workers who were crucial to keeping states and municipalities operating.
Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City urged the state to approve line-of-duty death benefits for the families of municipal employees who died of the virus. Some lawmakers in New Jersey are also urging their state to consider taking similar action.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City’s subway and buses, has also said it would give death benefits to the families of virus victims.
As meatpacking plants reopen, data about how many workers are ill is elusive.
The Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, N.C., is one of the world’s largest pork processing facilities, employing about 4,500 people and slaughtering roughly 30,000 pigs a day at its peak. And like more than 100 other meat plants across the United States, the facility has seen a substantial number of virus cases.
But the exact number is anyone’s guess.
Smithfield would not provide any data when asked about the number of illnesses at the plant. Neither would state or local health officials.
Along with nursing homes and prisons, meatpacking facilities have proven to be places where the virus spreads rapidly. But as dozens of plants that closed because of outbreaks begin reopening, meat companies’ reluctance to disclose detailed case counts makes it difficult to determine whether the contagion is contained or new cases are emerging even with new safety measures in place,
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers infected with the virus at the end of last month. But the nonprofit group Food & Environment Reporting Network estimated last week that the number had climbed to more than 17,000, with 66 meatpacking deaths.Trump’s struggles to stand still didn’t go unnoticed during Memorial Day visit to Arlington
DAILY NEWS
Oh sway can you see.
President Trump’s struggles to stand still during a Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery lit up social media Monday, prompting users to recall past incidents in which the commander in chief, who turns 74 next month, battled to find a balance.
“Is the President having trouble standing up straight as the National Anthem begins at Arlington Cemetary (sic) or am I seeing things?” Joshua Potash from Queens asked on Twitter.
The Trump critic posted that video, along with another clearly showing the president swaying in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Potash wasn’t alone in finding the somber moment moving in a different way.
“I think it’s the bone spurs,” joked tweeter Kimberley Cooke, referring to one of the five draft deferments that got the president out of serving in the military during the Vietnam War
Some critics wondered about the president’s physical and mental well-being after seeing the bizarre video. Others suggested he may be wearing uncomfortable shoes.
It was also pointed out that the president could be tired from the weekend he spent on the golf course after several months away from the links on account of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump started Memorial Day by rage-tweeting that the press was out of line for covering his decision to golf when nationwide deaths tied to the COVID-19 pandemic neared the 100,000 mark.
“What they don’t say is that it was my first golf in almost 3 months,” he wrote on Twitter.
The President frequently uses a golf cart rather than walking the course.
The fact that Trump recently said he’d been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine also arose in the Twittersphere, though the president reportedly said Sunday he was no longer using that medication.
Weather.com indicates winds were coming in around 4 mph Monday.