1, January 2021
US: ‘Trump predicted he would lose election, blamed son-in-law Jared Kushner 0
US President Donald Trump had predicted that he would lose the November election and pre-emptively blamed his senior White House advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner for trying to promote more coronavirus testing, according to a report.
Trump was broadly opposed to Kushner’s strategy on fighting the pandemic and did not want the information on how many people were infected to become public, The New York Times revealed on Thursday.
At one point, Trump had suggested that the US should “do what Mexico does” and not administer tests to anyone who was not gravely ill with the virus.
“Mr. Trump never came around to the idea that he had a responsibility to be a role model, much less that his leadership role might require him to publicly acknowledge hard truths about the virus — or even to stop insisting that the issue was not a rampaging pandemic but too much testing,” said the report.
Trump had also dismissed a Japanese study, presented to him by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in the fall, that had documented the effectiveness of wearing facial masks.
During a meeting of senior aides in the White House on August 19, Trump grew angry with increased COVID-19 testing which he blamed for higher cases. “You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Trump reportedly yelled at Kushner.
“I’m going to lose. And it’s going to be your fault, because of the testing,” he complained to his son-in-law.
Trump was also furious with America’s doctors and scientists, accusing them of conspiring with Democrats to undermine him during the election campaign.
Throughout the late summer and fall and in the heat of his reelection campaign, the president was frequently criticized over his erratic and unsteady handling of the pandemic and in the face of mounting evidence of a surge in infections and deaths far worse than in the spring.
Trump eventually lost to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, with opinion polls naming the coronavirus and the economy as being two of the major factors weighing on the voters’ minds.
Trump has refused to concede the election to Biden and has explored multiple options to overturn the results.
Source: Presstv
1, January 2021
US passes 20 million coronavirus cases 0
The United States has recorded more than 20 million cases of Covid-19, Johns Hopkins University said Friday in its real-time tally, as the New Year brought another grim milestone underlining the country’s struggle to quell the virus.
The US has so far registered 20,007,149 cases and 346,408 deaths in the pandemic, the Baltimore-based university said, making it the country with by far the highest official number of cases and the highest death toll.
On Wednesday alone, more than 3,900 people died of Covid-19 in the US, a new daily record, and experts believe the worst is yet to come as health care workers brace for a surge in cases and deaths after holiday gatherings.
More than 125,000 people are currently hospitalized with coronavirus — another record — according to the Covid Tracking Project.
The country has begun a mass campaign of vaccinations and nearly 2.8 million people have already received their first jabs, a figure well behind the 20 million inoculations that the administration of President Donald Trump promised by the end of the year.
More than 12 million doses have been distributed nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but efforts to vaccinate health workers and vulnerable people have been hampered by logistical problems and overstretched hospitals and clinics.
President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on January 20, has criticized the troubled vaccine rollout, and this week confirmed that he would invoke the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to force private industry to step up production for the government.
Source: AFP