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matr1x wrote:Michelle Obama qualifies to be president because she sucked Barack dick?
matr1x wrote:Michelle Obama qualifies to be president because she sucked Barack dick?
'It’s a hoax. There's no pandemic': Trump's base stays loyal as president fights Covid
News that the president has contracted coronavirus prompted alarm, confusion and schadenfreude among Trump supporters
Chris McGreal in St Joseph, Missouri
Sat 3 Oct 2020 14.27 BSTLast modified on Sat 3 Oct 2020 17.50 BST
Donald Trump walks to Marine One Friday, as he heads to Walter Reed Military Medical Center after testing positive for Covid-19. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Sean Patterson is not worried that Donald Trump has been hospitalized with coronavirus because he believes what the president tells him.
“It’s a hoax. There’s no pandemic. As Trump said, how many millions die of flu?” said the 56-year-old truck driver outside the early voting station in St Joseph, Missouri – a stronghold for the president.
But then Patterson pauses and contemplates the possibility that Trump really does have Covid-19.
“If he’s sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It’s what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold,” he said. “It’s political. I don’t trust the US government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety? I listen to Trump.”
At the end of a tumultuous week even by the standards of one of the most turbulent presidencies of modern times, the disturbing if not entirely unpredictable news that the president has contracted coronavirus prompted alarm, confusion and schadenfreude in the heart of Trumpland.
St Joseph, a former frontier city where the outlaw Jesse James met his bloody end, voted overwhelmingly for the president four years ago. The polls say Missouri will go his way again next month. But with Trump struggling in key swing states, the news he has fallen sick to Covid-19 jolted an election already battered days earlier by the most undignified presidential election debate in history.
Trump’s persistent interruptions and disruptions, including mocking Biden for wearing a mask in other situations, tested the faith of more than a few of his supporters. Now his contraction of coronavirus has raised further doubts after Trump repeatedly undermined medical advice as the Covid-19 death toll surged past 200,000.
His family openly defied regulations requiring masks at the debate. The president attended an election rally in Wisconsin the next day and failed to wear a mask. Several of his officials, including advisor Hope Hicks and former top aide Kellyanne Conway, have also tested positive.
Even some Trump supporters despaired at his cavalier attitude to the pandemic and his ability to turn a medical emergency into a political fight and loyalty test.
“I agreed with the president that it was wrong to shut down the country because of coronavirus,” said Karen White, an office manager who voted for him in 2016. “The damage to our economy was just too great. But he was wrong to question masks. I wish he hadn’t done it. He made things worse and now I have to wonder if he would even have it if he had just listened to what his own advisers were saying.”
Others were more sanguine. “It doesn’t worry me that he’s infected because I’m not surprised,” said Martin Rucker, a 63-year-old African American public servant on his way to vote early at the county courthouse in central St Joseph. “He didn’t take precautions to stop getting it and now he has it. It was predictable.”
Some of the more conspiratorially minded were, like Patterson, suspicious of whether the president actually has coronavirus but for different reasons.
“When I first heard, I did wonder if he made it up to get out of the next debate or win sympathy,” said Amy Grant, a 26 year-old shopworker. “Before it would have been impossible to think a president would make up getting ill but now anything seems possible. He probably didn’t but I’m not completely sure.”
Some Democrats were fearful at the prospect of Trump dying or being forced out of the race because they view the president as Biden’s best hope of election. Without Trump, a more measured and reasoned Republican candidate might prove a stronger challenge to Biden, a lacklustre campaigner who would probably not be so far ahead in the polls if not for the pandemic.
Other critics of the president privately wished the president ill, saying he has a lot of blood on his hands for playing politics with the pandemic and encouraging Republican governors, with the power to impose social distancing and mask orders, to do the same even as the virus ravaged the midwest.
Trump set the tone for Missouri’s governor, Mike Parson, who consistently resisted making masks obligatory in public spaces on the grounds that the government shouldn’t tell people what to do. Parson refused to wear one in shops because he said “there was a lot of information on both sides” about whether they are effective.
Parson tested positive for coronavirus last month and has been in quarantine.
Coronavirus may well cost Trump the election as his approval ratings plunged over the past few months, but some of those who have stuck with him this far are not ready to abandon him now he is sick.
“I will vote for him again,” said White. “I still think he’s better for the country. If Biden becomes president he will be under the control of the socialists.”
Patterson too will remain loyal even though, while he defends Trump on coronavirus, he was horrified by Tuesday’s debate.
“It’s a crying shame what we’ve reduced ourselves to. Gone are the days when two men could have a civilised debate about their policies,” he said.
The Democratic candidate’s campaign said it will suspend attack adverts against Trump after he was taken to the Walter Reed Medical Center.
Jan, a bookkeeper who declined to give her last name, would like to think that Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and what she called his childish behaviour at the debate, will cost him power.
“Trump thinks he’s better than everyone else. It was a matter of time before he got coronavirus because he doesn’t believe in masks and he doesn’t understand the function of masks,” she said. “But I think he could win again. There’s a lot of stupid people in this country. Maybe they want a despot to rule them.”
Rucker, the public servant, said Trump’s behaviour at the debate will have shocked a lot of Americans, but he doubts it will have any real impact on the election.
“It was very unprofessional but again I’m not surprised,” he said.
Rucker is not worried though. He thinks Trump’s handling of coronavirus, if it doesn’t cost him his life, will lose him the election and that even if he then refuses to accept defeat and tries to stir up violence, it won’t go anywhere.
“I don’t think he’ll win again. He’s so divisive. I believe in the US to endure,” he said.
The most unhinged Trump conspiracy theory comes from – who else? – QAnon followers
Arwa Mahdawi
The president, their reasoning goes, is pretending to have Covid-19 as part of a grand plan to arrest Hillary Clinton
Sat 3 Oct 2020 14.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 3 Oct 2020 14.01 BST
‘Does it really matter what some disturbed QAnon supporters on the internet believe? I’m afraid it does.’ Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
We’ll get through this TO GET HER
The second the news broke, the conspiracy theories started. Donald Trump is pretending to have Covid-19 so he can use his miraculous “recovery” to claim the virus isn’t a big deal; Trump is trying to avoid the next debate; Trump wants to delay the election; Trump is trying to distract us from his tax scandal. Forget the fact the guy rarely wears a mask and was bound to get sick at some point, an enormous number of people seem to reckon the president and first lady testing positive for the coronavirus is some kind of devious political strategy.
The grand prize for the most unhinged conspiracy theory goes to (who else?) QAnon followers. One of the many bizarre things these people believe (without any foundation) is that Covid-19 is a hoax designed to deflect attention from a Satan-worshipping pedophile ring operated by Hillary Clinton and liberal elites. Trump, their reasoning goes, is pretending to have Covid-19 as part of a grand plan to arrest Clinton. According to these geniuses Trump communicated his intentions via a tweet on Friday morning where he announced he and Melania had tested positive and declared: “We will get through this TOGETHER!” When you pull apart TOGETHER it spells out TO GET HER. Boom!
Does it really matter what some disturbed QAnon supporters on the internet believe? I’m afraid it does. QAnon isn’t just a niche movement any more; it’s tiptoeing its way into the American mainstream – and Trump’s Twitter feed. It’s also creeping into the halls of power: there are 24 candidates running for Congress in November who have endorsed or promoted QAnon content according to Media Matters, a disinformation watchdog. Only two of these are fringe independents – the other 22 are running as Republicans. Because of the districts these candidates are in, it’s almost inevitable several of them will end up being elected to Congress. That includes the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has expressed virulently racist views and repeatedly boosted QAnon theories; she won 57% of the vote in her primary runoff, defeating a neurosurgeon who had promoted himself as “all of the conservative, none of the embarrassment”. Trump, the embarrassment-in-chief congratulated Greene on her win, calling her a “future Republican star”.
As Greene’s primary rival discovered, a lot of conservatives seem incapable of embarrassment. There has been very little condemnation of QAnon from senior Republicans who, it would seem, don’t want to risk losing that coveted conspiracy theorist vote. If the path to electoral victory means tacitly condoning bizarre beliefs about a web of deep-state, Satan-worshipping pedophiles then so be it!
It didn’t have to be this way. The spread of QAnon could have been curtailed before it went global. It could have been nipped in the bud before it got so big that its followers look likely to become elected lawmakers. While Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit have taken major steps to curb QAnon’s presence on their platforms, many critics believe the tech giants acted far too late. A conspiracy theory on an online message board linked to white nationalists has morphed into a movement that looks to be a corrosive part of American life for a very long time. We’ll have a vaccine for coronavirus eventually – alas there is no vaccine for stupidity.
MaxPower wrote:matr1x wrote:Michelle Obama qualifies to be president because she sucked Barack dick?
Slim,
Be nice
Secret Service agents criticize Trump car ride: 'This should never have happened'
BY ZACK BUDRYK - 10/05/20 08:28 AM EDT
Multiple Secret Service agents are criticizing President Trump’s brief appearance in an SUV outside Walter Reed Medical Center Sunday evening, accusing the president of putting his protective detail in unnecessary danger.
“He’s not even pretending to care now,” an agent who requested anonymity told The Washington Post.
"That should never have happened," another unidentified agent, who works in both the presidential and first family detail, told CNN. "The frustration with how we're treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We're not disposable."
Agents are authorized to decline requests that would place the president at risk, but not those that would put themselves at risk.
Another agent, however, dismissed the idea that the president had shown reckless disregard for his detail.
"I've watched some of the news today and it's ridiculous to say the president is trying to kill off his detail," the agent told CNN. "He's unconventional, but we get the job done."
The White House has defended the safety of the president’s short trip outside the hospital. Spokesman Judd Deere said Sunday that “appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it.”
The president could be seen wearing a cloth face mask in the window of the vehicle Sunday. However, “masks help, but they are not an impenetrable force field,” Yale Institute for Global Health Director Saad B. Omer tweeted Sunday.
Trump was hospitalized Friday, hours after the White House announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus. The Sunday trip was his first public appearance since he was hospitalized and follows the release of conflicting information by the White House and the president’s doctors on his condition.
redmanjp wrote:he might feel better now but many ppl have felt better only for their condition to worsen. of course being POTUS he would have priority healthcare both at thr hospital and at the White House
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