[News] Trump delivers dark and divisive speech in first major appearance since Covid diagnosis

[S e u o n g]

 

A defiant President Donald Trump resumed public events Saturday with a divisive speech at the White House, where he potentially put lives at risk once again, just nine days after he revealed his own Covid-19 diagnosis.

After being sidelined from the campaign trail for more than a week, Trump leaned into his law-and-order message in a speech threaded with falsehoods that was clearly a campaign rally disguised as a White House event.
Trump claimed that if the left gains power, they'll launch a crusade against law enforcement. Echoing his highly inaccurate campaign ads that suggest that Democratic nominee Joe Biden would defund 911 operations and have a "therapist" answer calls about crime, Trump falsely claimed that the left is focused on taking away firearms, funds and authority from police.
With just three weeks to go until an election in which he's trailing badly in the polls, and millions of voters already voting, Trump is deploying familiar scare tactics.
Biden has not made any proposals that would affect the ability to answer 911 calls. As CNN's Facts First has noted many times, Biden has repeatedly and explicitly opposed the idea of "defunding the police," and he has proposed a $ 300 million increase in federal funding for community policing.
The event was purportedly aimed at Black and Latino Americans, who, he argued, are benefiting from his agenda. Attendees included members of a group known as "BLEXIT" that was founded by conservative firebrand Candace Owens to encourage African Americans to leave the Democratic Party. His speech, however, seemed clearly aimed at White suburbanites who are not sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

The ignorance of Trump inviting a group of Black and Latino Americans, who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, to an event at the White House at a time when he might still be contagious, was appalling to Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"The images we are seeing are absolutely extraordinary," Faust said on CNN's "Newsroom" as attendees on the South Lawn did very little social distancing, with many not wearing masks. "To literally draw (Black and Latino activists) into the White House, to a hot zone, is extraordinarily inept in terms of public policy and public health ... If you believe nuclear power is safe, you don't go and have a picnic at Chernobyl the next day to prove that point. "
The large gathering followed Trump's acknowledgment during a televised interview with Fox News Friday that he may have contracted the virus at one of the recent events at the White House. Trump gave an incomprehensible answer about his latest coronavirus test results Friday.
"I haven't even found out numbers or anything yet, but I've been retested and I know I'm at either the bottom of the scale or free," Trump told Fox News' medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel on "Tucker Carlson Tonight. " "They test every couple of days, I guess, but it's really at a level now that's been great - great to see it disappear."
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted that the Fox interview offered very little clarity about Trump's level of contagion and said that if the President had a simple answer about testing negative, he would have given it: "They are being purposely vague on this , but I think they're trying to track his viral load, "Gupta said on" Cuomo Prime Time. "
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Americans are still in the dark about the date of Trump's last negative test for Covid-19. But as Trump taped the Fox interview, he said he had stopped taking medicine eight hours earlier. But he also underscored the seriousness of his illness when he acknowledged that scans of his lungs in the hospital had shown congestion and that he took the steroid dexamethasone because it keeps "the swelling down of the lungs."
White House doctors have not spoken directly to the press since Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, and his doctor did not reveal his temperature in the latest statement on his vitals Thursday. Trump's physician, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, said in his Thursday statement that Saturday would be day 10 since Trump's diagnosis and based on unspecified tests that the team was conducting, "I fully anticipate the President's safe return to public engagements at that time."
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website that patients with mild or moderate illness are infectious for up to 10 days, while those with "severe to critical illness" could remain infectious up until 20 days after the onset of symptoms. The medications that Trump received have suggested serious illness to many of the doctors interviewed by CNN.

 

 

No evidence of change to White House protocols:

Still, the President's illness does not appear to have changed the safety protocols adopted by the White House or Trump's campaign, even though Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist, said on Friday that it's now clear that Trump's Rose Garden ceremony for his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, two weeks ago was a "superspreader event."
"We had a super spreader event in the White House," Fauci told CBS News Radio on Friday. "It was in a situation where people were crowded together, they were not wearing masks. So the data speak for themselves."
Attendees at Saturday's White House event must bring masks and will be subject to temperature checks, a source with knowledge of the planning told CNN. But while Trump said he may have contracted the virus at the White House, he made no mention of masks when Siegel asked him about the lessons he has learned from contracting the coronavirus. Cases are now rising in 28 states, and Friday marked a record number of new coronavirus cases worldwide - more than 350,000 in a single day, according to the World Health Organization.
"They had some big events at the White House and perhaps there," he said when Siegel asked where he thought he contracted the virus. "I don't really know. Nobody really knows for sure. Numerous people have contracted it, but you know people have contracted it all over the world. It's highly contagious."
Trump said his main takeaway from his illness was that Covid patients should seek medical treatment as soon as they detect possible symptoms.
"I think the secret for me was I got there very early," Trump said during the Siegel interview, acknowledging that many Americans do not have the same level of medical care or access to doctors that he does. "I think going in early is a big factor in my case."
But when it comes to preventing the spread of the disease, the White House still seems to be flouting basic public health precautions, with their Saturday protocol not looking much different from the September 26 Rose Garden event where at least 12 people who attended - including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was released from the hospital Saturday after a week-long stay - have contracted the virus, forcing the White House to empty out after aides went into quarantine.