White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 6, 2020

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GOP Sen. John Cornyn: Trump "let his guard down" on the coronavirus

Oct. 5 - Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told the Houston Chronicle that President Trump "let his guard down" when it came to the coronavirus and has created "confusion" by trying to downplay the severity of the pandemic.

Why it matters: Cornyn is a high-ranking Republican senator who is closely aligned with Trump and has rarely criticized the president. Cornyn is in a tighter-than-expected re-election race against Air Force pilot and Democrat MJ Hegar.

What he's saying: “I think he let his guard down, and I think in his desire to try to demonstrate that we are somehow coming out of this and that the danger is not still with us — I think he got out over his skis and frankly, I think it’s a lesson to all of us that we need to exercise self discipline,” Cornyn said.

“He tries to balance that with saying, ‘Well you know, we got this.’ And clearly we don’t have this.
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"I think the biggest mistake people make in public life is not telling the truth, particularly in something with as much public interest as here because you know the real story is going to come out”...       soureThe briefings on President Trump's health are a deliberate exercise in obfuscation, says physician and Post contributing columnist Leana S. Wen, viewed on Oct.6, 2020

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) asks questions during a Senate Judiciary 

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Committee hearing on Sept. 30

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• Will Republican senators defend Trump’s recklessness?
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• Oct. 6 - Even before President Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with a deadly communicable disease on Monday, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who is on the ballot in November, issued a rare Republican rebuke of the president.
• “I think he let his guard down, and I think in his desire to try to demonstrate that we are somehow coming out of this and that the danger is not still with us — I think he got out over his skis and frankly, I think it’s a lesson to all of us that we need to exercise self-discipline,” Cornyn told the Houston Chronicle. He rejected Trump’s notion that we have this under control, insisting, “I think the biggest mistake people make in public life is not telling the truth, particularly in something with as much public interest as here because you know the real story is going to come out.” For good measure, the senator added: “It is not easy to try to get things done working with him or the White House.”

White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 6, 2020

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A Sick Donald Trump Takes His Own Medicine. How Will That Go?

The president's national play-it-down approach is now his personal treatme

Oct. 6 - Like any normal person admitted to a hospital who can still talk and walk, President Donald Trump wanted out of there. According to CNN, he demanded his release on Sunday because, in part, he thought hospitalization made him look weak, but he settled for a quick lap outside the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in a Secret Service Suburban to demonstrate his vitality.

But now, he’s won his discharge, even though his doctor concedes he “isn’t out of the woods yet.” None of us—journalists, politicians, infectious disease experts, news consumers—can judge the wisdom of sending him home—because there is so much we don’t know about his health status. Instead of giving us the straight truth, Trump, his doctors, and his aides have buttered and sugared his condition to make it sound like he’s the healthiest man in sickbay. “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Trump exclaimed in his tweet.

Buttering and sugar-coating the ugly has been a hallmark of the Trump administration policy approach since day one, so it’s no surprise that he’s applying the same technique to his own infection. He has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, claiming that it will just disappear, that we must go back to work and back to school. He has directly discouraged reporters from wearing masks at press briefings and exaggerated the progress of a vaccine. First, he foisted the management of the pandemic on Vice President Mike Pence, then commandeered it so he could keynote the daily briefing, then abandoned the televised sessions because he’d made such a public relations botch of them only to pick them up again to spin the coming vaccine and therapeutics. In Trump’s mind, the best way to handle the pandemic on both the personal and policy levels has been to pretend it doesn’t exist, and that if it does, it’s not that important.

PBS NewsHour full episode, Oct. 5, 2020
Oct. 6, 2020
Monday on the NewsHour, President Trump prepares to depart Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, as confusion about his health persists. Plus: The expanding White House coronavirus outbreak, a former Pence adviser speaks out, two medical experts weigh in, how the president’s diagnosis is affecting both presidential campaigns and Politics Monday with Amy Walter and Domenico Montanaro.

White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 5, 2020

 

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Vice President Mike Pence gives a thumbs up at the end of an event in Carter Lake, Iowa, on Oct. 1, 2020. Pence will travel to Utah on Monday as he plays the Trump campaign’s lead act for the foreseeable future.

President Pelosi? Pence prepares to risk it all for Trump

The vice president is under pressure from some Republicans to secure himself in Washington. Trump’s campaign has other plans.

Oct. 5 - He’s the GOP’s one line of defense between a hospitalized commander-in-chief and a President Nancy Pelosi, and he’s about to depart Washington on a four-day campaign swing in the middle of his boss’s health crisis.

Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Utah on Monday as he plays the Trump campaign’s lead act for the foreseeable future — the highest-profile surrogate for the president’s reelection at a time when both men can least afford another setback following Donald Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis.     more details

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Donald Trump Is ‘Very Sick’ & ‘Not Physically Or Mentally’ Fit For His Job, Former White House Official Says

Oct. 5 - Former White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci appeared on MSNBC on Sunday claimed that Donald Trump is “very sick” and should drop out of the presidential race due to his damaged mental and physical fitness, PoliticusUSA reported.

“He still may be forced to drop out due to his health,” Scaramucci said. “We have no idea what’s going on with the brain fog or the lung damage as a result of COVID-19.”

According to Scaramucci, Trump would exit the race if he truly loved the United States.
“He’s not physically or mentally capable of being the president anymore, and he would do that. But if he’s not going to do that and if he gets some level of recovery in his mid-70s suffering from COVID-19 with all the comorbidities, I hope the people give a landslide election to Joe Biden and we can get rid of him overall as president.”

Although Scaramucci wished the president well, he urged Americans to remember that Trump has purportedly made America weaker, sicker, and poorer due to his decision to ignore the advice of scientists and epidemiologists throughout his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The result of this refusal, the former Trump official said, is that he could not prevent his family or staff members from contracting the disease.    more

PBS NewsHour Weekend Full Episode October 4, 2020
Oct. 5, 2020
On this edition for Sunday, October 4, mixed messages over President Trump’s health as he remains hospitalized after being diagnosed with COVID-19. And in our ongoing series “Roads to Election 2020” we stop by California where the future of the gig workers for ride-share companies in the state is on the ballot. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York.

White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 4, 2020

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 Dr Sean Conley, third from right, a Navy veteran and Donald Trump’s personal physician, walks to Marine One from the White House in Washington, Saturday, April 28, 2018. 

Sean Conley: the doctor who agreed to Trump taking hydroxychloroquine

The US navy veteran who is qualified in osteopathic medicine concluded the ‘potential benefit outweighed the risks’

Published in May, 2020 - Sean Conley, the doctor who acceded to Donald Trump’s request to be given a drug unproven to treat the coronavirus, is a US navy veteran and is qualified in osteopathic medicine.
Conley, who is from Pennsylvania, graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2006 and went on to undertake a medical residency at a navy base in Virginia. He was then deployed to Afghanistan, where he acted as head of a trauma unit at a Nato base.

The medical unit at the White House is typically staffed by doctors drawn from the US military and Conley found himself in line to become the president’s own physician after the departure of Ronny Jackson, who had previously raised eyebrows by praising Trump’s “good genes” and for saying that if the president had had “a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old”.   Details

Walter Reed Medical Center News Conference on President Trump
Oct. 4,  2020

纳卡战火再起 美俄土背后博弈
停火还是加码？20201002 |《今日关注》CCTV中文国际
Oct. 4,  2020

View shows settlement in Martakert district in Nagorno-Karabakh

‘Russia has a special position’: Azerbaijan’s president says Moscow is most suitable mediator in Nagorno-Karabakh dispute

Oct. 4 - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has named Russia as the best-placed country to resolve the dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, noting that Moscow has more knowledge of the region than either Paris or Washington.“Russia is one of the countries which is a mediator, along with United States and France,” Aliyev said in an interview with Al Jazeera published on Saturday.

Of course, Russia has a special position, because it’s a neighbor to Azerbaijan, neighbor to the region.
Aliyev believes that, due to Russia’s geographical proximity to the Caucasus, it has a better understanding of the events of the last three decades, and therefore can do a better job in helping to find a solution. “We think that three countries should continue to work together if all of them keep neutrality,” said the president. “If you are a mediator in such a sensitive issue, you should act in this capacity.”

In 1992, the US, France, and Russia became co-chairs of the newly founded OSCE Minsk Group, created with the goal of finding a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed region in the Caucasus, and both Azerbaijan and Armenia believe they have strong claims to the territory. The latest escalation in the conflict between Baku and Yerevan started on September 27, continuing a decades-long disagreement. On Thursday, the Minsk Group countries released a joint statement demanding an “immediate cessation of hostilities between the relevant military forces.”     source

White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 3, 2020

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President Donald Trump, First Lady tests positive for Covid-19
Oct 3, 2020
President Trump and the first lady tested positive for Covid-19. This comes after Trump's aide Hope Hicks tested positive for Covid-19. CNBC's Shepard Smith reports.
For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi President Donald Trump announced early Friday he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for coronavirus, plunging the United States into further upheaval and uncertainty just over a month away from Election Day.
Vice President Mike Pence, who is next in line for the presidency, and his wife tested negative, the White House announced later Friday.
The White House physician said the president and first lady were “both well” at the moment.
The New York Times, citing sources, said Trump was showing minor symptoms. In a tweet shortly before 1 a.m. ET, Trump said: “We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will g
et through this TOGETHER!” Shortly after Trump’s tweet, U.S. stock futures moved sharply lower with Dow futures falling more than 500 points at one point.
Dow were down nearly 500 points just ahead of the open Friday.
Trump is now the most powerful figure to come down with Covid-19.
Previously, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had tested positive for coronavirus and survived, as did Britain’s Prince Charles.

Chris Wallace says Donald Trump and his family arrived at the Cleveland debate venue too late to be tested for COVID-19 then refused doctors' requests to wear face masks - and now Fox New staff and stars including Lachlan Murdoch are having to be tested

Oct. 3 - Donald Trump and his family arrived in Cleveland for Tuesday night's debate too late to take the suggested COVID test, the moderator Chris Wallace has revealed. 

Wallace on Friday afternoon told his Fox News colleague Bill Hemmer that they were not tested.

'There was an honor system when it came to the people who came into the hall from the two campaigns,' Wallace said.
Wallace arrived in Cleveland on Sunday, in time to be tested.

'They couldn't be tested by the clinic,' Wallace said.

'They didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon. So for them to get tested, there wouldn't have been enough time to have the test and have the debate at 9 that night. They didn't show up until 3, 4, 5 in the afternoon.'

Eleven people involved with setup and planning for Tuesday's presidential debate tested positive for the coronavirus after the event, the city of Cleveland said on Friday, without specifying their role.  continue to read

White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 2, 2020

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MSNBC Anchor Cuts Off Insane Interview With Trump Adviser Over Biden Earpiece Smear

Mohyeldin finally had enough of Cortes’ ridiculous deflection with a conspiracy pushed by the Trump campaign, ultimately kicking him off the air.

Oct. 2 - MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin finally had his fill on Thursday when Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes couldn’t provide evidence backing the campaign’s baseless claim that Joe Biden’s campaign backed out of an agreement to inspect the Democratic presidential nominee for in-ear devices, cutting the interview short as Cortes yelled in objection.

Hours before Tuesday’s presidential debate, the Trump campaign claimed that Biden’s team had previously agreed to a pre-debate inspection for electronic earpieces but then reversed themselves on the day of the debate. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh insisted that along with Biden’s “refusal to take a drug test, it seems pretty obvious that the Biden team is looking for any safety net they can find.”

The Biden campaign, meanwhile, declined that any such agreement was reached and that the Trump team was just trying to muddy the waters and push unhinged conspiracies ahead of the debate. Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield called the claim “completely absurd,” “pathetic,” and that the Trump campaign was “lying.”   continue to read

WATCH: Trump Campaign Adviser Gets Caught In A Lie, Then Acts Like A Victim

Oct. 2 - ...“Look, they agreed to the ear inspection. It’s simple, it would have been by a third party, not by us. And then they went back on it. Why? I don’t know. I mean, they’ll have to explain that…”

Mohyeldin said the Biden campaign said this was false and ridiculous, adding: “I’m giving you a chance now. Do you apologize for misleading millions of people about making that false statement?”

Cortes said, “I didn’t mislead anybody. Give me your proof that it’s false.”

The host responded: “No no, that’s not how it works. You don’t make a false statement and say, ‘prove to me that it’s not false.’”

Asked who from the Trump campaign made the alleged ear-inspection agreement with the Biden campaign, Cortes couldn’t offer a name. He simply insisted negotiating teams for both campaigns made the deal.

Cortes then said, “You just called me a liar on national television and you have zero evidence that I am a liar.”     source

Trump Campaign Senior Adviser On The Presidential Debate

NPR's Tonya Mosley talks with Steve Cortes, a senior adviser for the Trump 2020 campaign, about how the president will defend his record in Tuesday's debate.

Sep. 28, 2020

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden go head to head tonight in the first of three debates. Elsewhere in the program, we hear from Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, who is a close adviser to the Biden campaign. Now we want to talk to Steve Cortes. He's a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

Steve, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

STEVE CORTES: Thank you so much for having me. And - funny - I literally just passed by Sen. Coons, so...
MOSLEY: Oh, really?

CORTES: We were - yeah, at the debate site - kind of funny.
MOSLEY: Funny coincidence - yes, so the president will have one of the biggest audiences of the campaign, an audience that will extend beyond the core supporters. He's been out in front of folks at rallies and other campaign events. What is the message he wants to convey to the American people?

CORTES: The biggest message is on the economy. The president will very rightly boast about the economy both that he built previously before the pandemic and the one that is reasserting right now. It's the No. 1 issue by all relevant polling. It's the No. 1 issue on voters' minds. It's also the issue on which he has the biggest lead over Joe Biden in polling. But most importantly, I just think it's the most compelling issue for effectively rehiring him as our national CEO for another four years. The economy he built in the first three years of administration combined with what's going on right now - we can't just talk about...  more

White House News (白宮消息) | Oct 1, 2020

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How much value does a chaotic debate yield for the American people? Sep. 30, 2020
Oct. 1, 2020

Joe Biden, in his first remarks on the chaotic presidential debate, said President Trump was a 'national embarrassment'

The Commission on Presidential Debates has vowed to change the format of the next candidate clash after Tuesday's debate was called a 'national embarrassment' by Joe Biden but an unrepentant Donald Trump said it was 'fun.' The chaotic 90 minute debate, where the president repeatedly interrupted his Democratic rival and moderator Chris Wallace, was dubbed a 's*** show' and 'dumpster fire' by pundits. In the aftermath, critics demanded changes to the format and Wallace was faulted for not being able to control the unruly president, who would not stop talking. 

Debate commission promises rule change to make next showdown 'orderly' after 'dumpster fire' clash which Biden admits was a 'national embarrassment' but unrepentant Trump says it was FUN

Oct. 1 - The Commission on Presidential Debates has vowed to change the format of the next candidate clash after Tuesday's debate was called a 'national embarrassment' by Joe Biden but an unrepentant Donald Trump said it was 'fun.'

The chaotic 90 minute debate, where the president repeatedly interrupted his Democratic rival and moderator Chris Wallace, was dubbed a 's*** show' and 'dumpster fire' by pundits.

Cricketer Tim Murtagh caught in case of mistaken identity with Donald Trump
One of Donald Trump’s key staffers replied to a veteran county cricketer as a case of mistaken identity involving the US President rolls on.

July 18, 2020Tim Murtagh is having more fun trolling Donald Trump’s critics than he does on a juicy green deck at Lord’s.

The former Ireland cricketer, who still plies his trade on the county circuit for Middlesex (or would be if it wasn’t for COVID-19), has been caught up in a case of mistaken identity involving one of Trump’s key staffers.

The seam bowler keeps copping a barrage of tweets from people thinking he’s the American President’s Director of Communications, Tim Murtaugh. And he’s having a right old laugh.

Murtagh the cricketer is re-tweeting up a storm of people coming after him thinking they’re actually attacking a member of Trump’s inner circle, and the 38-year-old veteran hasn’t been shy in playing along either.     source

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