Trump’s Memorial Day weekend: coronavirus misinformation, conspiracy theories, and golf

Memorial Day weekend is supposed to be a somber event for commemorating the women and men who’ve misplaced their lives whereas serving in the US navy — and it’s a very tragic one in gentle of the quickly mounting dying toll from the coronavirus within the US, which is quick approaching 100,000 lives. However President Donald Trump spent the weekend tweeting conspiracy theories and deriding his political opponents’ bodily look.

And within the few tweets he despatched addressing the coronavirus pandemic, Trump shared deceptive data. He did all this whereas taking part in golf for the primary time in months — one thing he mocked former president Barack Obama for doing throughout the Ebola outbreak, which claimed two lives within the US.

Trump’s tweets in regards to the coronavirus pandemic tried to color a optimistic image of the scenario within the US. On Sunday morning he tweeted, “Circumstances, numbers and deaths are taking place all around the Nation!”

However in actuality, the information doesn’t present this form of broad enchancment.

Whereas it’s true that new instances and deaths have began trending downward total, it’s unclear if the scenario is enhancing. In a number of Southern states, there’s been a reported rise in instances. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson stated Saturday his state is seeing a “second peak” in infections, and North Carolina reported its largest one-day improve of confirmed instances this weekend. Ohio noticed greater than twice as many deaths Saturday because it did Friday. And naturally, the nationwide dying toll continues to extend — it’s anticipated to succeed in 100,000 on Monday or Tuesday. So whereas the nationwide scenario is trying higher, many areas of the nation are removed from out of the woods. In different phrases, now is just not precisely a time for celebration, significantly provided that the consequences of relaxed stay-at-home orders have but to be totally decided.

Saturday evening, Trump retweeted a Twitter consumer who claimed that hydroxychloroquine “Is Most Efficient EARLY” for treating Covid-19. Trump additionally added a remark to his retweet, saying, “Many physicians agree with you. Additionally, some excellent research!”

However, as Vox’s Umair Irfan has defined, solely poorly carried out research have drawn this conclusion in regards to the drug, which Trump claims he took as a safety measure. Citing extra rigorous research, public well being officers have lengthy stated hydroxychloroquine has not been clinically confirmed to be a therapy for the coronavirus, that there’s no proof it may well forestall Covid-19 — and that it may well trigger severe unintended effects that ought to discourage informal use primarily based on the hope that it would work.

And a latest research printed within the premier medical journal Lancet on Friday discovered that coronavirus sufferers who obtained hydroxychloroquine had a considerably increased threat of dying in contrast with those that didn’t take it, and likewise had been extra more likely to develop a kind of irregular coronary heart rhythm that may trigger sudden cardiac arrest.

“It’s one factor to not have profit, however this exhibits distinct hurt,” Eric Topol, a heart specialist and director of the Scripps Analysis Translational Institute, informed the Washington Submit in regard to the research. “If there was ever hope for this drug, that is the dying of it.”

Trump additionally shared ugly assaults and made baseless accusations of homicide

On condition that it’s Memorial Day weekend, the norm for a president could be to point out deference to custom and provide pretty apolitical remarks in regards to the sacrifices made by American troopers. However Trump as a substitute spent most of it politicking in his ordinary adversarial, paranoid type, retweeting ugly assaults on Democratic girls and selling conspiracy theories about his foes.

He continued to push the weird — and as Vox’s Aaron Rupar has defined, evidence-free — declare that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is responsible of murdering a former staffer throughout his tenure within the US Home of Representatives.

“A blow to her head? Physique discovered below his desk? Left Congress all of the sudden?” Trump tweeted Saturday. “Massive subject of dialogue in Florida…and, he’s a Nut Job (with unhealthy rankings). Hold digging, use forensic geniuses!”

The president adopted this tweet with one Sunday during which he stated he believes there’s “much more to this story” than is contained in police experiences and the wealth of reporting on the topic.

Past suggesting there’s some conspiracy round Scarborough, the president additionally tried to advance his ongoing and incorrect argument that mail-in ballots result in voter fraud. There’s completely no proof that that is true or that mail-in voting poses a severe threat.

However that truth didn’t cease Trump from railing against the concept of increasing the power of People to make use of mail-in ballots in November’s election, claiming with out proof that it will trigger “the best Rigged Election in historical past” that includes “1000’s of forgeries” and folks stealing ballots from mailboxes.

These kinds of issues have, after all, not occurred in earlier elections closely reliant on mail-in ballots. As Sen. Mitt Romney has identified, most of Utah’s elections are executed pretty and by mail. And as Rupar has written, “the one occasion of large-scale mail-in election fraud probably swaying an election in latest historical past is a Republican scheme in North Carolina in 2018. Different states with mail-in techniques, resembling Oregon, have safeguards stopping that form of fraud from occurring.”

The president’s retweets contained some related distortion of actuality — as an example, sharing an previous video of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden describing his function in relaying a message to Ukraine as proof of corruption — in addition to merciless assaults on girls Democrats. He retweeted a Twitter consumer who made fun of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s look; took problem with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s facial options, enamel, and joked about taping her mouth shut; and who referred to as former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton a “skank.”

These tweets are petty and misogynistic. However the truth that they aren’t out of the atypical for the president is a reminder of how Trump has labored to vary the requirements to which presidents are held, and by which they’re judged. And that they arrive amid a pandemic makes them significantly putting — as does the truth that Trump frolicked {golfing} this weekend — the primary time he’s executed so in months.

Whereas it’s common for a politician to take day without work from work, it’s noteworthy that in 2014 Trump panned Obama {for golfing} throughout the outbreak of a virus that killed two folks within the US.

“There are occasions to play and occasions which you could’t play. It sends the flawed sign,” Trump declared on the time.

And giving some recommendation to his predecessor he has clearly chosen to not take himself, Trump added, “You recognize while you’re president you sorta say, like, ‘I’m gonna give it up for a few years and I’m actually gonna deal with the job.’”

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