US Politics, March 2020 — There’s a very good chance you’re not going to die.

i love when the president gets all philosophical

when the reboot of inferno gets writ there will be a gop toady-demon, always imping around donny, shouting this after every moronic pronouncement.

we'll see what happens
could be
who knows what will happen
could be good, could be bad
anything can happen
we'll see
who knows

this a preview of how the Stupid Rich will treat climate catastrophe: "most of us will be OK, fuck the rest of you"

yeah the way Trump/Hannity are now parading this "I always knew this was a big deal and treated it very seriously" line is definitely something we're gonna hear once Florida starts sinking

"One day I won't be here..." He's into Nixon '62 territory there.

to sum up (literally so) it's not racist to call Chinese food Chinese food so what's racist about calling it it Chinese flu

fuck this guy with a bullet

I've heard him describe the test as "very nasty" several times now and have no idea what he's talking about. A swab? That's nasty?

can they jam a KFC thigh up Trump's arse tied to dynamite

oh yeah. he can sometimes slip into this sort of disgusting appeal-to-sympathy mode. to whit:

The politicians. They have had me to their homes. They have introduced me to their children. I have become their best friends in many instances. They have asked for my endorsements, and they always wanted my money. They even called me really a dear, dear friend. But suddenly, when I ran for president as a Republican, they decided I have always been a no-good, rotten, disgusting scoundrel, and they totally forgot about me. But that's okay.

xp

yeah I got the flu test last month and it definitely sucks, I thought they were just swabbing my nose and instead jammed it way up into my brain (came back negative, probably had corona virus instead)

negative for brain?

His continued inability to actually describe the swab continues to imply he has not been tested

lol

i believe it. he seems the type to avoid medical tests

Well, it's a nose swab *and* a throat swap, right? Throat swabs are unpleasant, tbf. Like strep tests? They suck. They often make one of my kids barf.

maybe those closest to him want him dead so much that they just fake did a test and told him it was negative, there was no swab, they just moved their hands around a bit, touched his face

the tao of trumpTM says “it only matters if they believe i got tested, not whether i got tested. and i’ll beat that chinese virus if i get it. and if i don’t i’ll be dead so it doesn’t matter.” *trumpshrug*

student loan cancellation thing isn't for the entire amount, but it does cover a minimum of $10K:

Washington, D.C.— Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA), Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Development Ranking Member Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) today unveiled an emergency student loan payment and relief plan, which would provide much-needed relief to federal student loan borrowers through immediate cancellation of monthly student loan payments for the duration of the national emergency caused by the spread of the coronavirus, and a pay down of a minimum $10K for all federal student loan borrowers. The Senators’ proposal requires that Congress authorize the U.S. Department of Education to make monthly student loan payments on behalf of borrowers, equivalent to the amount due for all federal student loan borrowers (including Direct Loans and Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL)) for the duration of the national emergency declarations. The Senators’ proposal guarantees a minimum $10K loan payoff for all federal student loan borrowers.

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schumer-murray-brown-and-warren-unveil-bold-new-plan-to-cancel-student-loan-payments-for-duration-of-coronavirus-emergency-and-provide-minimum-10k-payoff-for-all-federal-student-loan-borrowers

of course, after both sides water it down, that'll probably be worse

they just moved their hands around a bit, touched his face

can't be held responsible

Hearing on replay that part of the briefing today where Trump berated the questioner with "You don't know, you don't know, you don't know" like a point of pride--I know these things, you don't. "You don't know" is obviously a huge part of the problem right now.

yeah. especially ironic was that the things she "didn't know" were things that should have been public information, things he and his team should have clearly communicated. it would've been more appropriate had he yelled "i didn't tell you, i didn't tell you, i didn't tell you"

also gotta love how he consistently shifts the responsibility and blame on states on issues that aren't going well (while claiming total ownership of anything that he thinks IS going well, of course). like the lack of essential supplies, masks, ventilators - he basically said "that's THEIR job, not our job. it's their job to get supplies. we are trying to help them out, though", while also claiming that everyone has plenty of supplies (??)

conmen gonna con

President Donald Trump's coronavirus approval rating is much better than it was two weeks ago, when 56% disapproved of how he was handling it.

This week:
Approve - 45%
Disapprove - 46%

(via @TheEconomist/@YouGovUS Poll) https://t.co/8ilvKurDSZ #TrumpJobApproval #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/EoFQxZu0L7

— YouGovUS (@YouGovUS) March 19, 2020

looks like this isn't really gonna hurt him after all

just wait

How many people will have to die for almost everyone to know someone who died? 100,000?

His coronavirus briefings could be nothing but him pissing into his own mouth and his approval ratings wouldn't fall below a certain floor, even among his fans who are actively dying from his inaction.

trump lied
People “duuuhh”ed

we're already there, honeybunch

I meant, as you might reasonably guess, when the coasts start to be inundated and the mass migrations get going.

oh, Kansas

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-pushes-back-kansas-governor-172856752.html

I'm sure TAKING AWAY EVERYBODY'S GUNS is at the top of the Governor's list right now

yeah, we need guns to fight the virus

why not go full nuclear?

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer…

it's pronounced nukular

I meant, as you might reasonably guess, when the coasts start to be inundated and the mass migrations get going.

I know you don't believe America outside NYC really exists, but there are also other countries available.

xp: Coordinated right wing messaging is still "China virus" finger pointing, and secondarily on the administration's belated travel restrictions, rather than the 6-8 weeks squandered with no executive orders to expedite testing/case tracing/quarantine, or build up the protective gear / ventilator reserves.

Still think we're on a trajectory to 10s or 100s of thousands of deaths, and an economic depression. This Fall, the negative case on how this administration downplayed this crisis and took inadequate action for a couple months (increasing its toll many fold) will be brutal.

https://i.redd.it/imnngu2r3jn41.png

I saw a Dan Crenshaw thing about how (I paraphrase), "We shouldn't be blaming the Republicans, we shouldn't be blaming the Democrats, but the Chinese didn't act fast enough..."

it’ll be half chinese and half handwave-y “no one knew viruses could be hard” bullshit and vary by which part of the tribe you ask.

lol It takes some balls to blame the Chinese for not acting fast enough when the reason we're where we are now is because the U.S. clearly didn't move fast enough.

looks like this isn't really gonna hurt him after all

― frogbs, Thursday, March 19, 2020 3:07 PM bookmarkflaglink

people slightly trusting him on a national crisis means extrapolated to the entire population, there are still a ton of people who might have newly soured on him.

Republicans and deplorables sampled will inflate the thing, but the question wasn't "would you vote for him in 2020?". I think slightly more highly of how he's handling things than I did last week, and still hate the fuck.

Possible some Republicans disapproved on previous polls and then came back home when he acted more Presidential.

his approval's gone down an average of two points in a mere few months, it will continue. two years ago yesterday, he was at 32% approval 59% disapproval. he can go lower.

besides....there are still a lot of people who think this is going to blow over in like two weeks, three weeks, who are suddenly going to sour on this whole sitch quickly when people die and/or people can't leave their house in September.

oh lord

I mean if we can't leave our houses in Sept, I'm going to be pretty damn sour

Goddamn, people, we're at post-Civil War levels of partisanship -- like, 1874 and 1876 levels. No matter how abysmally Trump White House may perform, the number of persuables is too low to matter. This illness will not sink him. It doesn't matter. What will sink him is if we all vote in November.

otm as usual, there's no point in fixating on his approval rating

or watching him speak in public, for that matter

The graph that Sanpaku posted would be much more effective in linear scale rather than log on the y-axis.

We're even past the point of GOP voters saying "fuck this guy" as we saw after Katrina. Trump is the ideal distillation of every GOP president since Reagan -- why abandon perfection? This is what his voters have wanted.