Summary
Here’s a recap of Sunday’s major news lines:
- New York mayor De Blasio asks if Trump is telling city to ‘drop dead’ over Covid-19. Mayor of city at center of coronavirus outbreak says not enough is being done to help finances of areas struck by pandemic.
- Governors: Trump making ‘delusional’ comments on testing and restrictions. State leaders say they cannot embark on Trump’s three-phase program to ease stay-at-home orders without widespread testing.
- Cuomo: ‘If the data holds, we are past the high point’. The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, says the total number of Covid-19 hospitalizations is down to 16,213, marking the sixth consecutive day that number has dropped.
- Questions mount over Christian group behind Central Park Covid-19 hospital. Facility run by Trump ally Franklin Graham’s organization requires staff to sign statement opposing gay marriage
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Trump is asked whether he is inciting violence by calling for people to liberate states.
“They’ve got cabin fever,” he says. “They want to get back. They want their life back. Their life was taken away from them. And you know, they learned a lot during this period. They learned to do things differently than they have in the past and they’ll do it hopefully until the virus has passed. And when the virus passes, I hope we’re going to be sitting next to each other at baseball games, football games, basketball games, ice hockey games. I hope we’re going to be sitting next to each other. The Masters is going to have 100,000 people, not 25 people waching at the course.”
He adds: “I’ve never seen so many American flags at a rally as I’ve seen at these rallies. These people love our country. They want to get back to work.
Trump is asked why he is reading and showing clips full of praise for himself at a time when more than 22 million Americans are unemployed and more the 40,000 have died as a result of the coronavirus.
“What I’m doing is I’m standing up for the men and women that have done such an incredible job,” he says. “Nothing is about me.”
“You’re never going to treat me fairly, many of you. And I understand that. I got here with the worst, most unfair press treatment they say in the history of the United States for a president. They did say Abraham Lincoln had very bad treatment, too.”
That one is actually true.
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Remember about a half hour ago when Trump played that excerpt from the New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s press briefing only to complain the clip wasn’t long enough and the good parts were left out? We’re in luck. Someone on his team has gone and found the complete footage.
The lights have gone down again and we’re watching Cuomo’s remark that no one in New York was denied a ventilator if they needed
LOL -- a half-hour after he got upset because the clip of Andrew Cuomo praising him didn't play all the way through, Trump finally gets his wish and the rest of it is played pic.twitter.com/DEAnKFq22w
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 19, 2020
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Trump is asked what advice he would give to the many protesters who are against the government’s restrictions.
“You’re allowed to protest,” he says, adding that “some governors have gone too far”.
He says he watched footage of the protests and was happy they were all practicing social distancing, which is very much not true.
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Trump is in full stream-of-consciousness mode, very much in the spirit of his campaign rallies.
He says the coronavirus has taught the nation an important lesson about the “supply chain” and the need to not have to rely on other countries in times of crisis. He then spends a few minutes criticizing trade policies with hard words for Nafta and the World Trade Organization.
“I want to read something I saw on television,” he says, before reading his own tweet from 19 Feburary off a large printed page.
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And now the lights go down and Trump plays an excerpt from the New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s press briefing earlier today.
After some initial technical difficulties, Cuomo’s words ring through the briefing room: “These were just extraordinary efforts and acts of mobilization and the federal government stepped up and was a great partner and I’m the first person to say it. We needed help and they were there.”
President Trump plays a clip of Democrat Andrew Cuomo praising his response to Coronavirus in New York pic.twitter.com/LLox28m594
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) April 19, 2020
After Trump returns to the dais, he complains the clip wasn’t long enough and the good parts were left out: “Do you want to put the rest of it up or do you not have it? I just think it’s good because it’s bipartisan.”
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After spending a few minutes reading from a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising his response to the pandemic, Trump points to the declining trajectory in new cases in the Seattle, Detroit, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Houston metro areas as “more evidence that our aggressive strategy is working”.
“Who ever heard of a thing like this?” he asks, circling back to familiar talking points. “We would’ve had millions of people die if we didn’t do this. Millions of people.”
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Donald Trump opens today’s coronavirus task force press briefing by saying they are “close to a deal” with Democrats on the latest relief bill for small businesses and workers, which could be resolved as soon as tomorrow.
He then says 4.18 million Americans have been tested for the coronavirus. “That’s a record anywhere in the world,” Trump says. “More total tests than all the following nations combined: France, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, India, Austria, Australia, Sweden and Canada.”
Trump says there is a “tremendous capacity” for testing before showing off a medical swab, likening it to a Q-tip. “We have ordered a lot of them,” he said, but notes that some states “don’t know where they are”.
Then a return to what’s become a recurring motif over the past few days: “We are now the king of ventilators,” he says. “We have so many ventilators.”
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New York City mayor Bill de Blasio ramped up the rhetroic in his campaign for increased federal funding for US cities during the coronavirus crisis during his press briefing on Sunday, asking Donald Trump whether his administration was “going to save New York City or are you telling New York City to drop dead?”
As the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:
De Blasio’s dramatic language came during his press conference on Sunday, after he warned last week that he planned to cut a further $2bn from the city’s municipal services budget due to the economic downturn. He said the city was likely to lose at least $7.4bn in tax revenue over the current and next fiscal year.
De Blasio has criticized the $2tn coronavirus relief package that Trump signed last month, saying New York only received $1.4bn from the stimulus, compared with around $58bn for the airline industry. He has called for the next package, which congressional and administration leaders say they are “close” to reaching a deal on, to include tens of billions for states, cities and municipalities.
The mayor had harsh words for the president, claiming both he and the vice-president, Mike Pence, have ignored his overtures on the stimulus funds.
On Sunday, De Blasio sent a message to the administration that echoed a New York newspaper headline during the city’s bankruptcy crisis of the 1970s.
“There was that famous Daily News cover that said ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead,’” De Blasio said. “So my question is, Mr Trump, Mr President, are you going to save New York City or are you telling New York City to drop dead? Which one is it?”
“President Trump, what’s going on? Cat got your tongue?” De Blasio continued. “You’re usually really talkative. You usually have an opinion on everything. How on earth do you not have an opinion on aid to American cities and states?”
A sensational investigation co-published today by ProPublica and the Seattle Times shows how officials in the first US state to be hit by Covid-19 struggled to send the public a clear, consistent message in the early days of the pandemic, bowing to a professional soccer team’s desire to host a game with 33,000 spectators despite urgent warnings from the health department for a ban on large gatherings.
On March 6, at 2:43 p.m., the health officer for Public Health — Seattle & King County, the hardest-hit region in the first state to be slammed by COVID-19, sent an email to a half-dozen colleagues, saying, “I want to cancel large group gatherings now.”
The county’s numbers — 10 known deaths and nearly 60 confirmed cases as of late morning — were bad and getting worse. Many local events had already been called off for fear of spreading the coronavirus. Oyster Fest. The Puget Sound Puppetry Festival. A Women’s Day speaker series at the Gates Foundation. King County had ordered a stop to in-person government meetings unless they were considered essential.
The health officer, Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, was to the Seattle area what Anthony Fauci would become for the country, the doctor at the microphone, dispensing guidance. Under Washington law, Duchin also had authority to make his wish an order.
Duchin sent his email 28 hours before the Seattle Sounders, defending MLS champions and one of the league’s biggest draws, were to host a match at CenturyLink Field. No event in the coming days would generate a gathering to compare. The game would draw people from across the Puget Sound area, and maybe beyond.
In the end, the match went on. Two days after the public health department wrote on Facebook, “We are making a recommendation to postpone or cancel events greater than 10-50 people,” officials in King County allowed a soccer match to be held with 33,000 fans, squeezed together.
How that happened is captured in hundreds of pages of emails exchanged among federal, state and local officials, as well as executives from the Sounders, Seahawks, Mariners and XFL Dragons. Those records, obtained by ProPublica and The Seattle Times, show how one meeting would beget another, one email would beget a dozen more, all while the virus was taking rapid hold.
The most recent count of Covid-19 cases in Washington totals 11,802 infections and 624 deaths, according to the state’s Department of Health.
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In a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine as part of its ongoing Covid-19 Notes series, the chief executive of a Massachusetts hospital accuses the federal government of running an effective PPE blockade that’s prevented the delivery of critical equipment to states in need. Emphasis ours:
Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual. Deals, some bizarre and convoluted, and many involving large sums of money, have dissolved at the last minute when we were outbid or outmuscled, sometimes by the federal government. Then we got lucky, but getting the supplies was not easy.
A lead came from an acquaintance of a friend of a team member. After several hours of vetting, we grew confident of the broker’s professional pedigree and the potential to secure a large shipment of three-ply face masks and N95 respirators. The latter were KN95 respirators, N95s that were made in China. We received samples to confirm that they could be successfully fit-tested. Despite having cleared this hurdle, we remained concerned that the samples might not be representative of the bulk of the products that we would be buying. Having acquired the requisite funds – more than five times the amount we would normally pay for a similar shipment, but still less than what was being requested by other brokers – we set the plan in motion. Three members of the supply-chain team and a fit tester were flown to a small airport near an industrial warehouse in the mid-Atlantic region. I arrived by car to make the final call on whether to execute the deal. Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.
Hours before our planned departure, we were told to expect only a quarter of our original order. We went anyway, since we desperately needed any supplies we could get. Upon arrival, we were jubilant to see pallets of KN95 respirators and face masks being unloaded. We opened several boxes, examined their contents, and hoped that this random sample would be representative of the entire shipment. Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure. I remained nervous and worried on the long drive back, feelings that did not abate until midnight, when I received the call that the PPE shipment was secured at our warehouse.
A number of US governors from both sides of the aisle, including Virginia Democrat Ralph Northam and Maryland Republican Larry Hogan, have accused Donald Trump of making “delusional” and “dangerous” statements amid mounting pressure to roll back stay-at-home measures.
As the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe and Edward Helmore report:
Many state leaders have said they cannot embark on Trump’s recommended three-phrase programme to ease stay-at-home restrictions without a robust and widespread system of testing in place.
Researchers at Harvard University have suggested the US should conduct more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the course of the next month, the New York Times reported.
Democratic Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia told CNN on Sunday that claims by Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence that states have plenty of tests were “just delusional”.
“We have been fighting for testing,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union. “We don’t even have enough swabs, believe it or not. For the national level to say that we have what we need, and really to have no guidance to the state levels, is just irresponsible, because we’re not there yet.”
Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC are still seeing increasing cases even as the epicenter of the US outbreak, New York, has started to see some declines. Boston and Chicago are also emerging hot spots with recent surges in cases and deaths.
“The administration I think is trying to ramp up testing, they are doing some things with respect to private labs,” said Republican governor Larry Hogan of Maryland during a CNN interview. “But to try to push this off, to say the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our jobs, is just absolutely false.”
Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest meat processors, has faced criticism after cases were linked to one of its plants in Waterloo, Iowa.
“My personal opinion is that it should be closed,” the Black Hawk county sheriff, Tony Thompson, told the Des Moines Register on Friday. “I think we need a hard boot, reset on that plant. I think we need to be able to sort out and cull the herd between the haves and the have-nots there. I think we need to deep-clean that facility and I think we need to restart that plant on a clean slate.”
That news was followed on Sunday by a CNN report that another plant in Tennessee had recorded 90 positive tests for Covid-19. The company says workers are required to wear face coverings during shifts and have their temperatures taken at the start of each shift.
A spokesperson for Tyson also said cleaning is a priority. “We have team members dedicated to constantly wiping down and sanitizing common areas. In some cases, this additional cleaning involves suspending a day of production,” the spokesperson said on Sunday.
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Donald Trump says the US is the 'king of ventilators'
Donald Trump has started his afternoon by declaring the US “the king of ventilators”. Several state governors have said they need more help from the federal government with Covid-19 testing in an effort to curb the pandemic. However, the president thinks he’s on the right course, while implying the onus was on governors rather than the federal government to ramp up testing.
Just like I was right on Ventilators (our Country is now the “King of Ventilators”, other countries are calling asking for help-we will!), I am right on testing. Governors must be able to step up and get the job done. We will be with you ALL THE WAY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2020
“Just like I was right on Ventilators (our Country is now the “King of Ventilators”, other countries are calling asking for help-we will!), I am right on testing,” the president tweeted. “Governors must be able to step up and get the job done. We will be with you ALL THE WAY!”
On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said the FDA had not paid enough attention to companies “putting a slightly different formula together” for tests. “I could probably double, maybe even triple testing in Ohio virtually overnight” if the FDA considered such options, DeWine said.
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The Miami Herald has reported on a problem facing one public hospital: agencies trying to headhunt staff during the Covid-19 pandemic. From the Herald’s report:
Staffing agencies have mounted attempts to poach the public hospital’s most crucial workers, even as the novel coronavirus upends operations and mashes its bottom line, with estimated losses of $25 million per month going forward under the status quo.
Plantada, who helps manage ventilators for critically ill COVID-19 patients, said the offers — as high as $7,000 per week plus room and board — are both aggressive and enticing. But she has no plans for leaving.
“We want to support our community,” Plantada said. “Most of the therapists down here, that is our priority: sticking by and being here for everybody else.”
The Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown, who one NBA executive once described as “too smart” for the league or “his own good” is one of the most interesting athletes in the US (and not too bad a player either). He’s never been shy of criticizing the current administration either and has written an op-ed for the Guardian on the Covid-19 outbreak. He’ll also be on CNN tonight at 7.45pm ET to discuss the topic with Wolf Blitzer. Here’s an extract from his column today:
America’s lack of medical resources is barefaced, and the number of unemployment claims is at an all-time high. I understand the urge to protect your closest loved ones. However, if you have the means, I urge you to extend a hand to a neighbor or friend who may be less fortunate. As I write this more than 30,000 people have lost their lives in the US alone. Of those heart-wrenching numbers, the percentage of African Americans and people of color is both alarming and disproportionate.
You can read the full article below:
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With Joe Biden effectively confirmed as the Democrats’ candidate for this year’s presidential election, the results of Wyoming’s Democratic presidential caucus don’t matter too much. Especially when Wyoming has the smallest population of any US state and only 21.6% of the state voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. But, nevertheless Biden won the state’s Democratic presidential caucus on Sunday. Here’s more from the Associated Press:
Joe Biden has won Wyoming’s Democratic presidential caucus, which had been postponed for two weeks and scaled back to just mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic, state party officials said on Sunday.
The results come less than two weeks after Sanders dropped out and endorsed Biden, who is the only candidate still actively seeking the Democratic nomination. Voting began when it was still a two-candidate race. Biden beat Sanders 72% to 28%. A total of 15,428 votes were cast.
The Wyoming Democratic Party announced the results after tabulating votes Saturday and auditing the results overnight.
What was originally to be a combination of in-person caucusing, drop-off and mail-in vote tabulation on April 4 was scaled back to just drop-off and mail-in and finally just mail-in voting.
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Thousands of protesters gathered at the Michigan state capitol last week in response to what they viewed as an overly strict stay at home order by Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Some protesters chanted “Lock her up” and demonstrations also took place in Ohio, Maryland and Texas.
Whitmer, a Democrat, has extended the stay at home order until 30 April and defended her policy on Sunday, saying it was helping save lives. As of Sunday morning, more than 2,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Michigan, the third highest number of deaths for any state in the US. Michigan ranks 10th among US state’s by population.
“You know my stay-home order is one of the nation’s more conservative, but the fact of the matter is, it’s working. We are seeing the curve start to flatten. And that means we’re saving lives,” Whitmer told CNN on Sunday. “Who among us wouldn’t rather forgo jet skiing or boating right now if it’s going to save your grandparent or your neighbor’s life and that’s precisely what the tradeoff is at the moment.”
Louisiana’s governor, John Bel Edwards, sounded a note of cautious optimism during a press briefing on Sunday. His state has been one of the worst affected by Covid-19 with only four other states recording more deaths from the virus.
“We’re in much, much better place today than we thought we were going to be,” Edwards said. He added that Louisiana has recorded a drop in the number of Covid-19 patients in hospital and fewer people are using ventilators.
There were 29 deaths in the state from Coronavirus announced on Sunday. “Now the number of cases and the number of deaths are lower than they have been for the last number of days, that’s a good thing, but I would caution everybody that typically on Sunday the numbers go down,” Edwards said. “It’s just a function of when the labs report and so forth, so what we would like to see is a continued downward trajectory tomorrow and Tuesday and on through the week.”
He also warned that life will not return to normal until a vaccine is released for Covid-19. Most experts believe a vaccine is at least a year away. “As always, I want to remind everyone that it’s going to take all of us working together and for some period of time to defeat this virus, get back to life as normal,” Edwards said. “We’re not going to see that for a while and I suspect we won’t fully see it until after there’s a vaccine that’s administered to the entire population.”
Australia’s former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has released a memoir and the Guardian has published extracts detailing his relationship with Donald Trump, who he describes as a “bully”. Turnbull was in power from 2015 to 2018 and is perhaps most famous in the US for a clash he had with Trump over an agreement, signed off by Barack Obama, for the States to take in refugees originally heading for Australia. He then details what happened when Trump pushed back:
Trump is a natural isolationist. Whether it was east Asia or the Middle East, Trump’s perspective was thoroughly dystopian. Everyone hated each other, had done for centuries and wasn’t going to change. So the less the US had to do with them the better.
After we’d had our one-on-one discussion and the media had left us, Donald suggested we ask [Turnbull’s wife] Lucy and Melania to join us. Melania was found first and Donald described the refugee deal. By now he knew, just as I had told him, there were no security risks among the refugees.
“Melania, do you know, Malcolm has 2,000 of the worst terrorists in the world locked up on a desert island and that fool Obama agreed to take them. Can you believe that? And now Malcolm has talked me into taking them too! He got me to do something I promised never to do! He is a tough negotiator!”
Melania smiled, faintly and mischievously. “Just like you, Donald,” she said.
The subject of an incandescent row a few months before was now something to make light of. It was just another deal.
You can read a more detailed extract here:
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“The president is right when he gets up there and says the models had many more people dying,” Cuomo says of the statewide efforts that kept infections and deaths far below the CDC’s mid-March estimates of twice the nation’s hospital capacity. “This is a great success story ... [but] don’t go backwards.”
Cuomo is then asked about President Trump’s tweet from moments ago:
Just like I was right on Ventilators (our Country is now the “King of Ventilators”, other countries are calling asking for help-we will!), I am right on testing. Governors must be able to step up and get the job done. We will be with you ALL THE WAY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2020
“Great,” Cuomo says, taking a slightly more diplomatic tack than on Friday when he responded to a different Trump tweet with a scathing 16-minute rebuke. “States must do their part and the federal government must do its part. Perfect. That’s what’s called partnership.”
Cuomo announces a plan for an “aggressive” statewide antibody testing program, saying they will be able to sample thousands of people in the coming weeks and promising the data will provide “the first true snapshot of what we’re truly dealing with”.
“That will tell us for the first time, what percent of the population has actually had the coronavirus,” he says. “Any plan that is going to start to reopen the economy has to be based on data, which means it has to be based on testing.”
The state’s Department of Health will run the testing, but Cuomo stressed that cooperation with the federal government will be essential to helping with the supply chain and coordinating with private labs.
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Cuomo: ‘If the data holds, we are past the high point’
New York governor Andrew Cuomo says the total number of Covid-19 hospitalizations is down to 16,213, marking the sixth consecutive day that number has dropped.
“If the data holds, we are past the high point and all indications,” Cuomo says during his daily coronavirus briefing from Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research on Long Island. “At this point we are on a descent. Whether or not that descent continues depends on what we do.”
Other key metrics including the three-day average of the hospitalization rate, ICU admissions and number of intubations are all down, the governor says.
Another 507 people died of coronavirus across the state yesterday – the lowest that figure has been in several days – bringing the overall death toll to 13,869.
“It’s no time to get cocky and it’s no time to get arrogant,” Cuomo says. “We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do. This virus has been ahead of us every step of the way. We have been playing catch-up from day one in this situation, so it is no time to relax.”
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Vice president Mike Pence claimed the US has “sufficient capacity” for testing for any state to go to phase one level of reopening in an NBC interview aired on Sunday morning.
State governors have said a shortage of testing, and a lack of help from the federal government to ramp up testing, are among the most significant hurdles in easing stay-at-home restrictions.
Researchers at Harvard University have suggested the US cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the course of the next month, the New York Times reported this weekend.
Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force, insisted testing had been a focus of the administration “from the very beginning” and walked away from Donald Trump’s claim last week that executive branch authority alone would determine when social-distancing guidelines could be lifted and businesses reopened.
“Just so we’re very clear, when the president outlined his guidelines for opening up America, we laid out a plan for both – for when and how we thought it was best according to our best scientists and advisors for states to be able to responsibly and safely reopen,” Pence said.
Downplaying reports of rifts between federal and state approaches to curbing the pandemic, Pence said that “at the president’s direction, we’ll continue to play our role” and would maintain “a full partnership with governors around the country”.
Pence disputed claims that the federal government, which is currently conducting 150,000 tests a day, had acceded responsibility for testing to individual states. This was, he said, “the reason why the president early on brought in this vast array of commercial labs that took us from 80,000 tests one month ago to now four million tests as of yesterday.”
Several state governors have claimed that Washington has rejected calls to co-ordinate testing at a national level.
“Admiral Brett Giroir of the US Public Health Service spends all of his time coordinating testing deployment and resources deployment from FEMA,” Pence added. “I want the American people to know ... we will continue to do that.”
The vice president said that the White House planned to “make clear” to governors in a conference call on Monday that “if states around the country will activate all of the laboratories that are available in their states, we could more than double that overnight and literally be doing hundreds of thousands of more tests per day.”
Pence continued: “There is a sufficient capacity of testing across the country today for any state in America to go to a phase one level, which contemplates testing people that have symptoms of the coronavirus and also doing the kind of monitoring of vulnerable populations in our cities, in our nursing homes, that we ought to be watching very carefully for outbreaks of the coronavirus.”
On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr Deborah Birx gently endorsed President Trump’s decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization by saying the first country struck by a pandemic has a “higher moral obligation” for communication and transparency.
“It’s always the first country that get exposed to the pandemic that has a – really a higher moral obligation on communicating, on transparency, because all the other countries around the world are making decisions on that,” Birx said, when asked if it was “fair to blame the WHO for covering up the spread of this virus”.
She added: “And when we get through this as a global community, we can figure out really what has to happen for first alerts and transparency and understanding very early on about … how incredibly contagious this virus is.”
Pressed on whether Trump halting funding to WHO over COVID-19 response is “fair,” Dr. Deborah Birx tells @GStephanopoulos first country with infection has “higher moral obligation” to communicate: “That’s something we can look into after this is over.” https://t.co/PYRdRpKqJS pic.twitter.com/kweOXOCQhB
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 19, 2020
Trump announced the decision to halt funding to WHO on Tuesday pending an investigation into its response to the coronavirus pandemic, accusing the group of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the virus”.
Birx appeared to corroborate Trump’s timeline on Sunday, saying: “It wasn’t until the beginning of March that we could all fully see how contagious.”
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Today marks 25 years since the Oklahoma City bombing, the second deadliest act of terrorism on US soil after the 9/11 attacks.
On April 19 1995, a truck bomb was detonated in Oklahoma City by a right-wing extremist and US army veteran, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.
Bill Clinton, who was president at the time, paid tribute to the victims and their families.
Today I am thinking about all those who lost their lives 25 years ago in Oklahoma City, their loved ones, and everyone whose lives changed forever that day. https://t.co/drDDabFqqp
— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) April 19, 2020
He added: “As we face another unprecedented challenge, we should repeat the promise we made to Oklahoma City in 1995 to all Americans today: we have not lost each other, we have not lost America, and we will stand together for as many tomorrows as it takes.”
In Washington, where the first US death linked coronavirus was reported in February, the state’s governor Jay Inslee said there has been “a lot of good news” but that it was not out of the woods yet.
“We’ve been able to bend the curve down, and the reason we’ve been able to do this is we’ve made decisions based on data, based on science, based on some of the best geneticists and epidemiologists in the world here at the University of Washington and other labs.
“The problem is those who still have not got the curve going down. We want to make sure we wrestle this beast to the ground.”
Inslee: Trump's support for protests against stay-at-home measures is 'dangerous'
The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports:
Washington governor Jay Inslee has again criticized Donald Trump’s support for protests against stay-at-home measures, saying on Sunday that such messaging from the US president was “dangerous”.
His fresh criticism comes two days after he accused Trump of “unhinged rantings” in tweets that called for the ‘liberation’ of certain Democratic-led states that have imposed that measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.
“I don’t know any other way to characterise it,” Inslee told host George Stephanopoulous on ABC’s This Week.
“To have an American president encourage people to violate the law, I can’t remember any time during my time in America where we have seen such a thing. And it is dangerous because it can inspire people to ignore things that actually can save their lives.”
Protests have grown around the country in recent days, and Inslee has been arguably the most vocal governor to speak out against Trump, who sent the “liberate” Tweets Friday attacking state leaders in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia for maintaining stay-at-home restrictions as he announced guidelines for reopening the country.
In the case of Virginia, the president also claimed, without evidence, that citizens’ Second Amendment rights were “under siege” after governor Ralph Northam signed into law tighter firearms restrictions a week earlier.
Inslee said: “It is doubly frustrating to us governors because this is such a schizophrenia, the president is basically asking people, ‘Please ignore Dr Fauci and Dr Birx [White House task force medical advisers], please ignore my own guidelines that I set forth,’ because those guidelines made very clear… that you cannot open up Michigan today, or Virginia, under those guidelines. You need to see a decline in the infections and fatalities. And that simply has not happened yet.”
Inslee added: “We hope there could be a restoration of leadership in the White House rather than hobbling our national efforts to protect people from this terrible virus.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee tells @GStephanopoulos by backing stay-at-home order protests, Trump is encouraging “insubordination” and “illegal activity.”
— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2020
“It is dangerous because it can inspire people to ignore things that actually can saves their lives.” https://t.co/z2JyETEl38 pic.twitter.com/9TtJDqYrOx
Pelosi: protests against stay-at-home measures are 'a distraction'
In her interview with ABC News this morning, House speaker Nancy Pelosi also cautioned against overplaying the significance of protests against stay-at-home measures that have been taking place in states including Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia, this week.
She said the protests and Donald Trump’s support for the demonstrators amounted to “a distraction” from failures in the White House response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I wouldn’t exaggerate the protests across the country. There are some in some places, largely where there’s a Democratic governor. But I think of it largely as a distraction and the president’s embrace of it as a distraction from the fact that he has not appropriately done testing, treatment, contact tracing, and quarantine.”
As the Guardian’s Lois Beckett reports, Trump and rightwing media have supported the demonstrators but they appear to represent a minority opinion:
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Pelosi: Trump is a 'poor leader'
Democratic house speaker Nancy Pelosi has dismissed Donald Trump’s almost daily attacks on her and other members of the Democratic leadership during the coronavirus crisis, saying she does not “pay that much attention” to the president’s tweets against her.
“As I’ve said, he’s a poor leader. He’s always trying to avoid responsibility and assign blame.”
NEW: Speaker Nancy Pelosi responds as Pres. Trump ramps up attacks against her: “Frankly, I don’t pay that much attention to the president’s tweets against me. As I’ve said, he’s a poor leader.” https://t.co/gLCCNHs7j9 https://t.co/dsnV1hURet pic.twitter.com/Dhxo2REiTB
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) April 19, 2020
Pelosi also restated her concerns about how the president will handle the next phase of the pandemic.
“I’m afraid that he’s going to act on the set basis of what he’s acted before. It’s a hoax. It’s magically going to disappear,” she said. “That’s not based on science. This isn’t magical. This is scientific.”
Schumer: small business deal could be reached tonight
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, also says the tea leaves look good for a small business deal this week.
“I’m very hopeful we can come to an agreement tonight, or early tomorrow morning,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, adding that he and House speaker Nancy Pelosi have been in discussions “almost 24/7” with treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin.
“Many of the things we have asked for, on the banking side, on the testing side, the hospital side, they’re going along with,” he said.
“Testing is the key, every expert says it. We will not be able to get the economy going full pledge unless we have testing,” Schumer said, noting that Democrats had proposed $30bn in the so-called ‘Covid 2’ bill to fund manufacturing and supply chains, more widespread and free testing, and contact tracing.
One interesting footnote to Schumer’s conversation with Tapper: he was asked about reports that progressive New York congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had not ruled out a primary challenge for his New York Senate seat.
“I’m totally focused on this Covid,” he said. “We are the epicenter. And I’ve found throughout my career, you do your job well and everything else works out OK.”
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Mnuchin: 'my idea' to have Trump's name on checks
Tapper also wanted to know if reports that an additional $1 trillion or more will be needed in the next government stimulus package are accurate.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Mnuchin said, adding that “another $300bn should be sufficient to reach almost everybody.”
Mnuchin was also defensive about the roll-out of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website allowing taxpayers to log on and check the status of their stimulus money, worth up to $3,400 for a family of four. The website was beset with problems at launch and many who had hoped to upload direct deposit details for quicker payment were greeted with error messages.
Mnuchin said more than 40 million taxpayers had accessed the site successfully, and five million had been able to upload details. Others who are eligible will receive a paper check, controversially with Donald Trump’s name on it. Reports this week suggested the vanity project would hold up the checks.
Apparently, there is a difference between having Trump’s name merely printed on the checks, and having the president sign them, which Mnuchin said he rejected because that would have caused delays.
“That was my idea,” he said. “He is the president and I think it’s a terrific symbol to the American public.”
Mnuchin: 'very close' to deal on stimulus for small businesses
The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports:
On CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper points out that Sunday marks 50 days since the first coronavirus death was recorded in the US.
His first guest was treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has been under fire since the first round of government stimulus money for business, some $340bn, was exhausted inside two weeks. Some of the money went to successful large companies, while many small businesses received nothing.
Mnuchin concurs with Pelosi that a new funding deal is close, and tells Tapper it could be signed off by the middle of this week. He says he’s going to make sure that smaller operators are taken care of this time.
“That’s something we did correct already,” he said, pointing out the average loan was $250,000. “There were some big businesses, but the majority is going to small businesses. I know there’s other people who are still waiting in line and we’re going to try to make sure all the banks get to them quickly in this next batch of money.”
He said he had had discussions with congressional leaders including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and that: “We’re very close to a deal today.”
“I’m hoping the Senate can reach an agreement tomorrow and the house can take it up on Tuesday, Wednesday we’ll be back up and running.”
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According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, a majority of Americans are concerned that states may start re-opening too soon.
The poll found that 58% of interviewees were worried the US would move too quickly to ease stay-at-home restrictions, causing further spread and more deaths from the coronavirus, while it found that 32% were more worried the US would take too long to loosen them and hurt the economy.
The White House last week issued its guidelines for governors on the criteria for re-opening their states after imposing stay-at-home orders to curb the spread of coronavirus. But the guidelines were still full of unanswered questions on how the plans would work.
Pelosi: lawmakers close to coronavirus funding deal
Good morning live blog readers
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she believed lawmakers are very close to a deal on approving extra money to help small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re close,” Pelosi said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” broadcast on Sunday. “I think we’re very close to an agreement.”
The Associated Press reports:
An agreement would end a stalemate that has lasted more than a week over President Donald Trump’s request to add $250 billion to a small-business loan program. Congress set up the program last month as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus economic relief plan, but it has already run out of money.
Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer say they favor more money for small businesses but also want more coronavirus response funds for state and local governments and hospitals, as well as food assistance for the poor.
“We want to make sure that it’s reaching all of America’s small businesses. And we also want to make sure that it’s operating in a community where our police and fire, our health care workers, our doctors, nurses, our teachers, are being compensated for and not fired,” Pelosi said.
“That’s why we’re asking for the additional funds in the package, as well as for hospitals so that we can do testing, testing, testing.”
Governors of hard hit states such as New York and New Jersey have said they need more federal funding to significantly ramp up testing capacity.
