Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp Push Back on Donald Trump’s Covid Revisionism
“Clearly, [Fauci] could have been fired from the [Trump] White House Task Force. There was no obligation to run him out at press conference after press conference, have him doing media interviews.”
Just before the Labor Day holiday weekend, former President Donald Trump posted a video on Truth Social responding to the “sudden fearmongering” coming from Democrats over the uptick in COVID cases along with reports of a new variant.
In the video, the 2024 GOP presidential candidate talked about what many conservatives are talking about, which is the sudden Democrat/media focus on the virus, vaccines/boosters, and masks as we head into a presidential election year.
Trump portrays himself as a champion of pushing back against mandates and lockdowns, telling the “COVID tyrants” who have already instituted some form of mask mandates and/or vaccine mandates that “we will not comply“:
‘Hear these words: We will not comply. So don’t even think about it,’ he said. ‘We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.’
Watch:
COVID Tyrants want to take away our Freedom.
Hear my words— WE WILL NOT COMPLY. pic.twitter.com/Kql1YaxuO0
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 30, 2023
As readers will notice, however, the post was Community Noted to point out two things: Trump bragging in August 2020 about how his administration “turned” the economy “off” for a period of time and how it was starting to roar back:
….My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, turned it off, saved millions of lives, and now am building an even greater economy than it was before. Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back & watch!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2020
. . . and how he and his team “issued national guidelines that included closing schools and avoiding bars, restaurants and groups of more than 10 as he prepared for months of upheaval” at the start of the pandemic.
On Saturday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who Trump criticized in April 2020 for allegedly reopening too soon and who Trump has also attacked as a “RINO” over his stance on the 2020 Georgia election results, hit back at the former POTUS, writing that Trump “led the opposition” to him reopening the Peach State.
“While he listened to Fauci & parroted media talking points, I listened to hardworking Georgians,” Kemp also stated.
The fact is former president Trump led the opposition to my decision to reopen Georgia – the first state in the country to do so.
While he listened to Fauci & parroted media talking points, I listened to hardworking Georgians.
He may not remember, but I sure as hell do. https://t.co/8eWPidlnfP
— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) September 9, 2023
Kemp wasn’t wrong. The video tells the story:
Three years ago today, Donald Trump began a series of attacks against Georgia Governor @BrianKempGA, demanding Kemp keep Georgia shut down. Kemp ignored Trump, reopened Georgia, and Georgia's economy and families have been better off. pic.twitter.com/SL2xStvPUd
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) April 22, 2023
As a reminder of Trump’s stance on reopening at the time, there was also this:
….It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered Trump’s main rival for the GOP presidential nomination, also pushed back last week on some of Trump’s claims about the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus, saying that yes, Trump could have fired Fauci but didn’t—and that his change in tune on how he handled Fauci doesn’t add up:
“First of all, you’re not allowed. He’s civil service, and you’re not allowed to fire him,” Trump told Hewitt. “But forget that, because I don’t necessarily go by everything. But Dr. Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn’t do them in many cases. But also, he wasn’t a big player in my administration.”
[…]
“It’s important to point out for a long time that was not his excuse,” DeSantis told the Rubin Report on Wednesday. “His excuse had been that if you fired Fauci, both the Democrats and the media would have pitched a fit, which, of course, is 100% true.”
“But that’s the price of leadership. You got to stand up and do what’s right,” the governor continued. “Clearly, he could have been fired from the White House Task Force. There was no obligation to run him out at press conference after press conference, have him doing media interviews.”
[…]
“During the height of the COVID stuff in 2020, Fauci would do local hits in Florida media attacking me for having schools open and some of these other stuff,” he said. “So, there was no obligation to do that. I think you could have also fired him from NIH because he had basically committed misconduct with the gain of function.”
DeSantis also made similar remarks during a recent Fox News interview:
DeSantis on Trump’s COVID record: “At the end of the day, the leader has got to take responsibility… When we reopened the state, he criticized us. When we had kids in school…he criticized us. When we said no vaccine mandates, they criticized us.”pic.twitter.com/Ntf91nIMDO
— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) September 8, 2023
Of the two, Trump’s ire has been directed far more at DeSantis over his management of Florida during the pandemic, with some pretty fantastical revisionism coming from Trump in saying, for example, that disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) managed the outbreak much better than DeSantis did.
Trump has also put out highly misleading information about the Florida coronavirus death rate and has falsely painted DeSantis as the king of lockdowns when DeSantis was, like Kemp, one of the first governors in the nation to reopen his state after initially going along with the “15/30 days to slow the spread” push coming from the Trump White House coronavirus task force, which included Fauci.
In that same Fox News interview, DeSantis forcefully refuted some of the claims Trump has made about his record of managing the outbreak in Florida, correctly pointing out for example that though he initially went along with what the Trump administration was advocating, he soon analyzed the data and decided “to chart a separate course”:
.@RonDeSantis on Trump saying FL was one of the worst states on COVID: “That’s total nonsense…Those 1st few wks, we followed some of the…guidelines. I’ve always said that, but then I was looking at…data myself & I made the decision…to chart a separate course…FL boomed” pic.twitter.com/IgZDeh9QPW
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 8, 2023
DeSantis noted that Trump was running campaign ads a month before the 2020 presidential election that included Fauci praising the administration’s response to the pandemic, and that Trump awarded Fauci (and Dr. Birx) Presidential Commendations shortly before he left office:
“This is important. Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in October of 2020 was running ads bragging with Fauci saying Trump did everything I told him to do. They were bragging about it and then on January 19th, 2021…he gave Fauci a presidential commendation, so those were wrong…[L]ooking forward, we need accountability for what went wrong because those people in positions of authority…they lied about lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, they were wrong. It did a lot of damage around this country…The people that were harmed–a lot of them came to Florida…So, we need a reckoning so that it never happens to our country again & we instituted permanent protections in FL…against all this stuff.
People said, ‘oh, you are talking about old issues.’ Well, you see they’re trying to bring it back. Montgomery county, Maryland school district forcing students to wear KN-95 masks during the school day. We know that doesn’t work. So, we’ve got to clear house in these medical bureaucracies. We need evidence-based medicine, not narrative-based policies.”
Watch:
.@RonDeSantis: “This is important. Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in October of 2020 was running ads bragging with Fauci saying Trump did everything I told him to do. They were bragging about it and then on January 19th, 2021…he gave Fauci a presidential commendation, so… pic.twitter.com/gRhPN6OT7N
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 8, 2023
On the other hand, Trump is on record as repeatedly touting the supposed need for shutdowns, with many clips in the below video showing him being a staunch advocate during his presidency for them, and boasting about how the state shutdowns supposedly worked:
rump did some great things (I can think of 3 of them on SCOTUS) But we need to STOP the gaslighting. He unraveled our country by kowtowing to Fauci and pushing lockdowns and vaccines – which TO THIS DAY – he has never renounced.
How much responsibility does Trump bear? pic.twitter.com/3SsFkRVR7u
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) September 2, 2023
I think the message from both Kemp and DeSantis to Trump on this topic are very clear here: On the issue of who handled the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak better, you might want to sit this one out.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Trump got caught up in the adoration of press. He needs to stop doubling down and admit that wrong decisions were made in the initial “fog of war” of covid and that he has learned and will never again use fake health emergencies to justify suspension of constitutional rights.
That said…..we cannot let the left’s tactics to disqualify Trump to work. They are apoplectic that they have not yet forced him out. Re-electing Trump is an imperative to stop them. Rush always said you can tell who they fear most….
Will Trump stop doubling down?
Nope. He won’t. Trump is an ego driven narcissist who will never admit that anything he has ever done while president of the united states was wrong. In his opinion his presidency was the bestest presidency in the whole history presidencies and that’s the end of it.
Ego driven narcissist also describes Biden.
No, dim-witted dementia patient would better describe Biden.
Trump didn’t stop them before, but if we elect him again this time he’ll do so?
He was trying to play the game within the establishment’s rules. Hopefully he has learned by now that he is not welcome amongst the elite and will go scorched earth. One trait he has is that if you hit him, he comes back at you hard. This is what we need to have happen. No other R will fight in any meaningful way.
I think he will just display more of his incompetence and the left will roll over him again.
I am torn between having to vote for a man that I do not believe will be good for our country and also cannot allow what the left is doing to him. What is unbelievable to me is the msm can’t see what the left is doing and has no comment on a third-world tactic. I have been a fighter all my life and I think that the left must be defeated on this shameful trick. That being said I will vote for Trump but his personality and looseness with the truth make him a hold-my-nose candidate.
“Rush always said you can tell who they fear most….”
Who does Trump go after almost daily? Not Biden but DeSantis. Why?
doing the democrats favors is a 24/7 job with these guys
at what point do they give up and get on the team ?
Duh is already saying that a strong second in IA is all he needs
2 months from now, it will be the top 3
they couldn’t care less about the election
their job is “get rid of Trump”
after that, it’s gravy
Hindsight better, the truth is that a vast number of lied about it. non of us had reasonable information. It was and continues to be a grand con. Half the population is still blind. Make no mistake that Establishment Republicans and RINOs are just as guilty as Dems.
“non of us had reasonable information” is not true. Corona virus vaccines have been in development for 30 years with no success (even no partial success). A vaccine strategy was asinine from the get-go. Nearly everyone knew it. At the time, 50 tests on masking had been done. They all showed masking was useless, and they know why. The viruses are too small. The 14 day quarantine was stupid. A virus has to do whatever it is going to do within a few hours before the body gets onto it. It can’t take even 3 days to get a beachhead which why ionospheres are so effective at the beginning. These things were all well known, but the press pushed for a vaccine, because that is where the money was for big pharma. The NIH made $125 billion dollars on one vaccine in one year for doing nothing except for looking after their own interest at the expense of our national health. Everyone in the know, knew in February of 2020.
This is simply not true. The biggest indicator that the Chinese Death Kooties wasnt particularly dangerous was the cold hard data itself. Children are practically immune, as are teens, people in their 20 to 50’s and people fit and healthy. Those who were at risk were the fat kients out there who have not looked after their health and those with multiple serious health issues (again, many stemming from being a fat kient and not looking after their health).
However Democrats had a President to remove so used the Chinese Death Kooties for their sole benefit and we all had to pay a price for their desire to regain and retain power.
Yeah, but you are missing the big picture. COVID-19 was dangerous – for the generation of people in charge of things. Who are the governors, legislators, presidents, SES corps, CEOs etc… Mostly older men, often obese and with other health problems. The virus was a threat to the people who ran all of society at every level. They had to do the lockdowns and restrictions to prevent the younger generati9on from implementing the Twitter meme that was promulgated early in the pandemic – Boomer Remover
Trump himself was conflicted because he was personally scared, but his supporters didn’t want lockdowns.
Little Ronnie is left with trying to diss President Trumps marriage
But never fear Ronnie
Legalinsurrection will ALWAYS be here for you
Now burp for mommy…
You’re funny. If “Little Ronnie” is such a loser and has no chance of winning the 2024 presidential nomination then what in the heck are all you Only Trumper lunatics panicking about. According you DeSantis doesn’t stand a chance. So why not just completely ignore him as a “Not Threat” to Saint Trump and be done with it. Why all these idiotic Only Trumper comments. It’s as if you’re scared of “Little Ronnie”.
And if you’re so unhappy with
LegalInsurrection.comperhaps you should head on over totruthsocial.comwhere it is just infested with Only Trumpers with their noses up Saint Donnie’s hind end. I’m thinking you’d be much happier over there than here.No answer? Just a down vote? Again, what is it about DeSantis that terrifies you so much. That he might actually be nominated instead of Trump despite the fact that Saint Trumpus has declared him a loser? What panics you Only Trumpers about DeSantis that he must be continually attacked by the Only Trumper minions. Really, I’d like to know.
I am not an “only Trumper”, but I don’t see how DeSantis can win a presidential election, and the other GOP contenders are not viable for other reasons. He signed a 6-week abortion ban. That is fatal in swing states.
Again, I’d like to know exactly what terrifies and panics the Only Trumpers when it comes to DeSantis despite Saint Trum declaring him a Loser. That should be good enough for them to realize that the constant attacks are unnecessary. But it isn’t. And the attacks continue. Just can’t understand that.
So a man of principle cannot win an election? The public will only vote for a known liar and a cheat like Biden? Abortion is now a state-regulated function and being POTUS has nothing to do with abortion.
So DeSantis cannot win because he restricted abortion in his state? Trump appointed 2 Supreme Court judges (from a list approved by the “GOP elite” he rails against) who overturned RvW, and he is totally electable?
Trump was inarguably pro lockdown. He pushed it. He held weekly, sometimes daily, press conferences alongside Fauci and Birx lending them his credibility. He repeatedly bragged about his Admin’s Covid response. He went after Kemp and DeSantis on their opening up their States. He went after Sweden for never locking down.
That’s the factual record. All this ‘but we didn’t know about how respiratory viruses worked in 2020’ is farcical. Trump got snookered on his Covid response by the little fascist Fauci. He hasn’t yet come to terms with his failure on this issue and the lasting damage it caused. His refusal and the refusal of his ardent supporters to tell the truth and admit Trump screwed the pooch on Covid drastically undermines the credibility of the campaign.
Trump wasn’t snookered. He was scared.
He had every right to be scared. We were all scared but we expected some semblance of the truth from our leaders. Trump listened to two people throughout the first year even though both were non-practicing virologists. Trump unfortunately thought the vaccine was going to be his ticket to four more years and now he is beginning to see that it isn’t. But for him to now come out and lie about it is just unforgivable.
A bit off topic. I haven’t seen Kemberlee’s byline for some time. Is she okay? She usually chimes in on politics.
She’s mostly over at LIF now and doing a GREAT job!
Dang between this and crispy cream stalking ( is t that against the law?
Asking for a friend )
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/kiss-death-countdown-45-days-left-trump-campaign/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/i-will-start-following-him-around-country-wherever/
DeSantis tried to run with the big dogs when he wasn’t ready, He sure burned a lot of bridges.
LoL.
thegatewaypundit.comis the best you can do? Sorry, don’t read such obvious clickbait websites. You might be happier there though, comment section looks as if it’s full of hysterical Only Trumpers.I rarely look at the site, less than once a year. Bottom line is that DeSantis stepped in a steamy pile.
As a Georgian, I don’ t always agree with Kemp..but he’s done a damn good job and made common sense decisions that have worked out well..Thank goodness he figured it out and stood up to the Covid nonsense three years ago..I am proud of him for pushing back on Trump when he’s needed to.
He’s a globalist rino through and through and he was very much in on the steal as he is refusing to fire the out of control DA
He and Raffensperger are responsible for the sh!t show this country is in
Opening up the state a few months before others, vs destroying , literally, our Country,
NOT EVEN CLOSE
I pretty much despise him now.. over election shenanigans, and the dominion tabulators, but life in GA seemed much better than most other places. Even the two week thing was kinda optional. I have never been proud of him. Actually, I am ashamed he is my governor.
Do you live in Georgia ? Do you own a small business here? Do you know what shit show the Secretary of State’s office was before he was SOS (before he became governor)? He was elected to administrate and execute the laws of the State of Georgia and he has done a damn good job.
Our business has grown exponentially since he took over due to his small business friendly policies…That is all.
Except for protecting the integrity of voting eh. Other than that he’s a great guy!
As a Georgian, Kemp has always conducted himself as a RINO unless forced into a conservative position.
And I knew he would be that way as soon as I saw his first ‘pro-gun’ campaign commercial, cleaning his shotgun in front of his daughters’ ‘boyfriend’.
It’s pretty sad for two establishment politicians like DeSantis and Kemp pretending that they would have done anything different. Trump’s ego gets him a lot of binds but those two career politicians are even more fake.
The problem with this statement is that we know, for a fact, that both governors DID do everything different. Starting in Spring, 2020. With the same information available to Trump.
So, Kemp and DeSantis didn’t shut their states down and require masks at the beginning of the pandemic? Really? SD is the only state that didn’t follow federal guidelines on these two policies. The problem with your statement is you’re ignoring that.
All of the DeSantis supporters are hoping you don’t realize DeSantis was also a gullible idiot and locked his state down and they’ll try to gaslight you further by saying Noem supported lockdowns, even though she never locked down her state.
The DeSantis supporters are being duplicitous and they, like DeSantis, have low regard for the voter.
I would have to say that it’s Trump supporters like yourself who have a low regard for the voter. You are actively trying to eliminate their right to have a say in who their nominee is by demanding that everybody not named Trump drop out of the race and line up behind Trump even before primary season starts.
I live in Florida and am fully aware that DeSantis locked down the state . . . for about three or so months. I’m also aware that Kemp opened Georgia back up about a month (or maybe it was a few weeks?) before DeSantis reopened Florida. Both states were reopened in the Spring of 2020.
Imagine if Trump had done that for the nation! No covid-excuses for “fortifying” the election, no dismal economy in 2020, no tax-payer funded checks for people to get more Trump cash for staying home than for going to work, and Trump coasts to reelection.
But he didn’t do what these two governors did: change course for the people of their states. He just kept following Fauci . . . long after Kemp and DeSantis had reopened. In fact, Trump was writing to DeSantis in January of 2021 telling him to start enforcing mandates. Seriously. The month he was leaving office, he was STILL doing the wrong thing (DeSantis, of course, ignored him and continued to do the right thing for our state). So yeah, Kemp and DeSantis got it right. Trump most assuredly did not. And it probably cost him the presidency in 2020.
You stated that DeSantis and Kemp would have done the same thing Trump did. They would not, and we know that because they did not.
I’m not turning this into a defense of Trump. He was terrible on the pandemic. And I don’t a take a nuanced stance on policy. And you’re pretending that individual states don’t have autonomy on following federal guidelines. States give their autonomy away for federal dollars. I don’t see this as some great win against the establishment in DC which are the real culprits.
Not true
But you already know that
What specific part or parts of what I wrote is untrue?
Wiki
Timeline for Florida State Government Response
Date Action Taken
March 1, 2020 Public health emergency declared.
March 17, 2020 All bars and nightclubs ordered to close for 30 days.
March 17, 2020 School closures extended to April 15, and state-mandated school testing cancelled.
March 28, 2020 Emergency alert sent to cell phones throughout Florida from the state’s Surgeon General regarding public safety.
March 30, 2020 Stay-at-home order issued for several South Florida counties.
April 1, 2020 Stay-at-home order issued for entire state.
June 1, 2020 Statewide moratorium on evictions and foreclosures extended by 30 days.
June 5, 2020 “Phase 2” of reopening begins, except for the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.
June 26, 2020 Banned alcohol sales at all bars across the state.
September 25, 2020 “Phase 3” of reopening begins.
Ok now tell us what was the similar timeline on Federal actions during the Trump Admin. Even better let us know the date Trump ordered the DoJ to use the Civil Rights division to begin intervention in Citizen lawsuits v State, County and Municipal govts that shut down Churches, imposed mandatory restrictions that only big box stores could afford and so on.
I am willing to give everyone a pass on Covid insanity for the first few months. Then the data began to come in and we had enough evidence to prove those of us on the anti lockdown side were correct. It didn’t take a PhD in Virology to know that masks wouldn’t work, arbitrary 6ft social distance was BS and that picking down businesses, churches and schools was not only a bad idea but likely ineffective with costs far greater than any possible gain.
Some political leaders adjusted course in the face of the evidence. Some did not and unfortunately Trump was among those who stubbornly refused to direct the agencies under their control to back off the totalitarianism and scare mongering panic porn.
Occam’s razor. That is all because Trump was scared of COVID, and the fact that it came close to killing him right before the election shows he was right to be scared. Obese older men are vulnerable.
What is the problem here, though? The state was opened back up in May. After the alcohol ban, Floridians complained, and the ban was lifted if food was served. Suddenly every bar in Florida (the red areas anyway) was serving free tortilla chips or peanuts. Food.
At no point during any of this was there any enforcement in my area. Heck, restaurants opened prior to the lifting of the initial lockdown order, and no one said or did anything about it. Nothing was enforced outside of blue areas, and that was stomped out when DeSantis took the teeth out of local tyranny with an EO stating that no Florida city, country, or municipality could fine, jail, or otherwise legally harm a Floridian for flouting local draconian (and stupid) covid rules. By the way, these blue areas used Trump as their reason for imposing fines and arresting people. It was TRUMP who let that happen because he did not oppose it, he let Fauci run America for over a year, to horrific result.
Look, I lived in Florida throughout the plandemic, and I know, for a fact, that after about March or so, no one around here was masking or social distancing or any of that. There was no enforcement. No businesses said you couldn’t be there without a mask or vax card or whatever. I have documented my experience here in Florida in comments all along. Heck, I remember writing one comment about some tourist trying to find an open public restroom (not easy to find). This masked person suggested that there were none available because of covid. I responded that was unlikely because this is Florida. One time, in the spring, I want to say maybe late March, early April, I went to Walmart, and they had a huge bs roped off and socially distanced bs maze in front of the store (from corporate, no doubt), and we all just walked in as if it wasn’t there. Some guy handed me a mask, and I thanked him (because that’s what you do) and shoved it into my purse. And then I went about my shopping. There may have been two masked customers in the entire store, and we all kind of looked at them sideways and grinned . . . because so stupid. Another time, this guy was out on his bike, mask on, biking down the bike lane. I just shook my head to myself and wondered how long before he dropped dead of a heart attack from performing such a physical activity in spring Florida heat (i.e. air you can wear humidity) while masked and therefore breathing in all the wrong things. Outside. In the sunshine. Alone. I would have pointed and laughed, but he was seriously risking his very life with that crazy. Not so funny.
Granted, I live in deep red Florida, where nothing was enforced, ever. Not from the beginning, not to the end. And DeSantis didn’t do crap about it (if he even knew we were all going about our business as if covid didn’t exist). The ONLY moves he made were to ensure that Floridians could not be legally penalized for flouting local orders from blue tyrants. I’m so so good with that.
In some ways, I feel a bit out of touch with the rest of the country because we simply did not experience the plandemic in Free Florida as others did. Heck, I didn’t even experience the same plandemic other districts in our own state did. But one thing I know for sure is that DeSantis did everything right, including not enforcing his orders in our city (or county for that matter). We did our thing here, and no one in Tallahassee said a word, batted an eyelid, or cared at all.
Oh, and our beaches were open for Spring Break 2020. And come they did, from all the locked down states closest to us (and I’m sure some from further away–heck, even AOC and a ton of lockdown Democrat tyrants came here during the plandemic . . . BECAUSE we were free here. And we were and remain free BECAUSE of Ron DeSantis.).
Where were you in 2020? you must have been on another planet if you believe the garbage you just wrote. Explain how DeSantis is a fake. Come on, just one little hint. He signed a 6 week abortion ban in FL so that makes him a fake? He stopped the Chinese from buying land near any military installation. He opened up the entire state even though Trump belittled him for it. He worked his way through college and became a lawyer, joined the Navy JAG, and served in Iraq but somehow he is a fake?
All three are engaging in revisionism because they all know no one is going to cut any of them slack on their idiocy in pushing anything remotely associated with lockdowns, vaccines, social distancing and all that other bullshit.
You are wrong. We were all told that we needed two weeks of a lockdown to SLOW the spread of the virus so that our hospitals and ERs could keep up. Every state except SD followed that request. After the two weeks were up governors began to look at the data and decided that to stay locked down was worse than the virus. Trump didn’t. Your revisionism is worse than Trump’s.
Trump got caught up in the adoration of press. He needs to stop doubling down and admit that wrong decisions were made in the initial “fog of war” of covid and that he has learned…
I’m not holding my breath waiting for this.
..we cannot let the left’s tactics to disqualify Trump to work. They are apoplectic that they have not yet forced him out. Re-electing Trump is an imperative to stop them.
Ever heard of B’rer Rabbit and the briar patch?
Rush always said you can tell who they fear most….
Rush was great but he said many things that were incorrect.
“Rush always said you can tell who they fear most….”
Concerning liberals, Rush (and others) was absolutely correct about this.
And the reason I want Trump as president isn’t that I think he’s politically superior than any other candidate, it’s because I’m looking forward to seeing some liberals’ head actually explode on air.
That’s pretty silly, given the circumstances. There are a lot of reasons to vote for the GOP nominee, Trump or otherwise, but that isn’t one of them.
I think Trump is the only current contender who has a prayer of beating the Democrats, regardless of who the Democrats run. That is why they fear Trump. DeSantis may be a competent governor for the most part, but he can’t win a presidential election. He stepped on that 6 week abortion landmine.
I agree but it is our country that we are talking about. Do you think anyone is going to work with him in DC? McCarthy? Not on your life. If he is elected and wins both Houses McConnell is not going to work with him. His ego is so big now but if were to win he would be unaproachable. Everything he said and did would be payback but he would have no power without Congress. If he accomplishes anything it will be through executive orders just like last time.
What we need is a competent politician to advance good ideas. Choosing to be obsessed with hurting the other side’s feelings is ineffective in getting good and lasting policy established. Trump was always the wrong candidate and is still the wrong candidate.
“with some pretty fantastical revisionism coming from Trump in saying, for example, that disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) managed the outbreak much better than DeSantis did.”
Gee, isn’t this precisely the MSM narrative?
if Trump is saying this, it’s shameful.
Trump sent those two Navy hospital ships, one to NYC and one to California as I recall. Nobody ever said what they were for. It’s a weird story.
It was to take care of the “thousands” of Covid patients as to not over burden the hospitals
NYC never used them
It was all
Hysterics, but President Trump tried to
Help every governor, every request amd sent numerous ventilators over seas
Everyone was screaming for them
Thanks for reminding us about all the people who were murdered by being placed on ventilators. People tend to forget the role of hospitals in boosting the death toll.
Yep. And Saint Donnie Trumpus also gave us “Operation Warp Speed” that bypassed any remaining safety programs at the FDA which resulted in the development and release of the mRNA serum (not a vaccine) that caused more damage and death to the citizens of the world than any effing lack of ventilators (which also killed huge numbers of people that otherwise might have survived their covid infection).
Trump never mandated the vaccines, though. Biden did that.
Cat: Without Operation Warp Speed, it’s likely there wouldn’t have been any killer jabs to mandate.
Yes, Trump did say that, and yes, it is shameful. We covered it here, and Stacey provides this link.
How could anyone give you a downvote for that statement? That makes no sense since Cuomo by his stupid policies killed thousands of old people.
Some people are crazy and will not tolerate any legitimate criticism of Trump.
A lot of what Trump did was reasonable at the time, even if it could have been improved in hindsight. But he’s guilty on two serious counts:
1. He didn’t promote Dr. Zelenko’s early treatment with zinc and HCQ, then later the discovery of the effectiveness of ivermectin. He mentioned HCQ once, to say he did that, but in a way that it could be ridiculed (“drinking bleach”, etc.). Instead he promoted Fauci et al and took advice from them. He should have known this was wrong at the time.
2. Now he’s lying about what he did. That’s certainly wrong.
I guess you don’t remember his attempts to
Encourage the use of alternatives, including HCQ and Ivermectin, and the response of many of the governors and state licensing boards that tried to destroy all medical personnel that promoted actually treating patients?
Let’s not forget the love affair the media and politicians had for Fauci and the threats to President Trump if he tried to fire the prick…by his own party. Considering he was dealing with impeachment and McConnell absolutely had the ability to order 10 Republicans to vote to impeach…
Yeah, it was all scientist and President Trumps fault
Jesus
What you are describing is Trump bowing to the pressure applied by the DC establishment, just as he did when he refused to use his VETO to reject th budgets lacking 100% funding for the promised border wall.
Either Trump is the ‘fighter’ willing to do battle with the DC establishment/swamp and fight them using the full power of his office at every turn on our behalf or he is another politician who, upon election, becomes more concerned with staying in office and re-election than delivering on his campaign promises.
Trump did a lot of good in office. But his Admin’s Covid response wasn’t one of them. When he and his supporters refuse to admit this or try and make excuses for the failure it undercuts the credibility of his campaign.
No, he didn’t ENCOURAGE alternate treatments. He mentioned a couple and then went back to the dwarf and Miss scarf. If he had said I am asking all medical facilities to try other products to fight this virus there would have been a massive outpouring of help. He didn’t and the results are his fault, your dismissal notwithstanding.
Like prior disasters, 911, Pearl Harbor etc., the initial response contained serious oversteps, Covid was no exception. The oversteps, some lasting for years, were amplified by intentional misinformation from formerly trusted US health agencies. Trump was as much a victim as we were. Let us hope we won’t be fooled again.
Has Trump given any indication that he did anything wrong or that he wouldn’t be “fooled” again? Did he after states opened and the people were pushing back against tyranny both here in the U.S. and in other countries (Australia comes to mind)?
Did he grab a clue when his own public health officials were fine with the burning, looting, and murder taking place throughout the summer of 2020 but insisted people couldn’t go to the gym or church? Or did he, atypically, have nothing to say about this now magic virus that doesn’t touch BLM and antifa but hits Sturgis and empty playgrounds?
How did he not know at least by summer ’20? You knew. I knew. Are we smarter than Trump? I doubt that. So why did he go along with Fauci and Birx despite all evidence showing they were not just wrong but actively harming our economy, our kids, even our elections with mail in ballots, drop boxes, etc.? Our great country was harmed because Trump did not put America first. Not early on, not as data came in, not as states opened, not as BLM ran rampant, not at all. And he is STILL saying he did everything right. He didn’t, not by miles.
Occam’s Razor – Trump was scared of COVID himself, and that colored his judgement.
That is neither a reason nor an excuse. That’s cowardice.
I am sick and tired of a pass being given to the early phase of the Corona Virus charade because the data weren’t in. It was known from the beginning that masks were not effective and that there was a relatively low and highly stratified infection mortality rate. Nothing about this virus justified the discarding of vaccine development safety protocols, or economic shutdown. The situation was a witch’s brew of political cowardice, bureaucratic opportunism and politico-corporate greed and power aggrandizement. It utterly destroyed the American mythology of the rugged individual as exemplified by the cowboy. We are a country of untucked-shirt wearing, epicene, mind-controlled flakes.
Do we want a repeat of the lockdowns and mandates?
No,.
Did Trump promise to do it again when reelected?
No.
Does anyone believe he is lying to us in that video?
I don’t. Do you?
So what’s the problem?
I seem to recall candidate Trump promised us a ‘big beautiful wall’ on the southern border. We didn’t get it and that can be laid directly onto Trump who failed to use his VETO power to reject the DC establishment budget presented to him by Ryan and McConnell. Instead of rejecting it Trump meekly went along with it and didn’t use the opportunity to fight the establishment to deliver on his central campaign promise.
Tell you what, when Trump can administration mistakes, accept accountability for them, explain how and why he effed up, what lessons he learned from those mistakes and what he will do differently in similar situations (the DC establishment not wanting to play nice with him) then h will have far more credibility on Covid.
The problem Chief is that he continues to lie about obvious things that can be checked. If he is willing to do that in this era of electronic media then he hasn’t learned a thing. Calling people little childish names and lying about recent history is so un-presidential.
Yep. He made a simple video that is prospective, so people can jump on the past.
They need something to bicker about.
He has a history. It’s perfectly legitimate to consider that history when evaluating his campaign promises for a future administration.
DeSantis also has a history.
As a reminder, Fauci *and* Birx would have needed to be fired at the same time. The two of them backed each other up constantly during the lockdowns, so while other members of the scientific community were actually doing science, examining data, and trying to pick facts out of the vast whirlwind of panic and confusion, they had already selected a ‘solution’ and were hammering it out to a frightened populace daily.
No one disputes that fact but when data did start to come in he made no changes. When states began to reopen and have success he made no changes. He continually bragged about “Warp Speed” which as it turns out was a horrible mistake. There should never be any kind of vaccine that has no long-term test.
Got to work this morning with some update emails from NR.
One of the best was their ‘horse race’ update about the election. It was headlined “The Race for Runner-up Tightens’
And I can see why.
With strategies like these, DeSantis could move from ‘extremely distant third’ to near ‘extremely distant second’.
I’ll say it again, the uniparty is trying to destroy DeSantis viability.
And how is it that the writers at LI don’t read the articles they cite? If they had, they would have caught that the piece they used to show Trump’s clash with Kemp undermines what they say and reveals Kemps tweet as a lie..
In the article Trump says he doesn’t agree with Kemp re-opening just then, but he wouldn’t stop him–
““Maybe you wait a little bit longer until you get to a phase 2. So do I agree with him? No, but I respect him and I will let him make his decision,” Trump said at a White House press conference. “Would I do that? No … But I’m going to let him make his decision, but I told him, I totally disagree.”
That is what later Kemp calls ‘at the forefront of the opposition to his re-opening Georgia’ ………..so, not stopping it at all.
And Kemp, speaking at the time and not post 2020 election, said that he was using all the guidance given by the admin to insure that this worked.
But NOW he was vehemently opposed to it. Suuure.
If I find fault with any of Trump’s policies as president, it is that he allowed Fauci wide latitude and a huge platform during the Virus Era. In fact, he essentially allowed Fauci to run the country for several years. Trump had many options at the time—e.g., telling Americans that we have nothing to fear except fear itself, that we can’t let the cure be worse than the disease—but he completely caved in to Fauci when he should have known better. He could have been a much stronger, sensible leader.
First-term presidents make mistakes. Even Reagan made the giant mistake of deploying troops to Beirut where a truck bomb killed >200 US troops. DeSantis is sure to make his share of big mistakes during the first term of his presidency if he prevails in the election.
Trump now has the experience to avoid rookie errors. He is also opposed by the entire government bureaucracy, including both Republicans and Democrats. Both of those facts make his candidacy attractive to many Americans.
Don Surber (https://donsurber.substack.com/) states that a winner other than Trump in the presidential election would represent a victory for the deep state. It is hard to argue with his logic.
Trump made most of those mistakes in the last year of his presidency with three years of experience to avoid any more “rookie errors”. It doesn’t appear that he learned all that much in the fourth year, when he made ALL of his COVID related mistakes.
Has Trump admit these errors? Told us what lessens he learned from them? How he will handle similar situations?
This is a softer attempt to sweep Covid under the rug, though I do truly appreciate your honesty in admitting that Trump’s Covid response was horrible.
There are only two things Trump must elocute to, tell us what went wrong and explain how he will act differently in future similar situations. Covid and the border wall. Specifically if Congress hands him a budget without full funding will he VETO it until the funding is included? On emergency powers/lockdowns/executive agencies running amuck, will he immediately put a stop to it and direct the DoJ to start suing States, Counties, Cites whose political leaders are intent on violating the civil rights of Citizens?
If he can assure his skeptics on the right of those things this primary contest will be rapidly concluded in his favor. If he can’t/won’t or he adopts a strategy of ignoring those and blaming others v taking accountability for what he did and didn’t do the primary will continue.
“Trump now has the experience to avoid rookie errors.”
Does he? Look at his post-presidency and tell me where he has shown any learning curve. He chose Oz and Walker and backed Roon McDaniel and Kevin McCarthy as his helpers. He continually lies about things that are readily proven to be untrue. He still calls grown men little boy names and insults anyone who he thinks is a tad disloyal. I’m sorry but I don’t think at his age he is going to change.
You know I look at this–
“…My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, turned it off, saved millions of lives, and now am building an even greater economy than it was before. Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back & watch!”
And at the phrase everyone wants us to notice “My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, TURNED IT OFF,”
And I can’t help but think that Trump didn’t ‘turn off’a damned thing. DeWine did. Cuomo did. Newsom, Kemp, Abbot and even DeSantis did.
Governors shut their states down. Mayors went even further.
Trump didn’t. He didn’t have the power. He didn’t take it when it was dangled.
Yes, the CDC made pronouncements. And governors implemented those lockdowns.
We tend to look back with rose colored glasses on those few that resisted from the outset, like Noehm, but I remember the empty beaches in Florida. I remember the theme parks that were forbidden from opening. all across the country.
In that statement, Trump took responsibility for the actions of those governors. He took the blame –because that was what was right He was the president, the final authority. It was with him that the buck stopped.
And how many remember the other part– “and now am building an even greater economy than it was before. Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back & watch!””
Because that’s where we were when he gave that speech. Things were starting to take an upturn.
And then the Democrats stole the election and brought with them woe.
Literally.. As soon as they staged their coup things started going down the crapper.
yes, Governors did the lockdowns. But none of that would have been viable without federal funding. Trump is responsible for that, as are members of Congress.
I guess you didn’t see the video of Trump saying that the governors didn’t have the power to lock down their states but he did. Also if you remember correctly the lockdown was to be for two weeks. Noem did not lock her state down but it is the least populated state in the country. One FL city has more people than her entire state and 10 times the number of elderly.