July 1, 2020: Trump: The COVID Lone Ranger

 

July 1, 2020: President Trump attacked former Vice President Joe Biden today, accusing him of speaking coherently. 

After Mr. Biden appeared for a press conference yesterday, his first in three months, and spoke in complete sentences, the president exploded. Trump claimed without evidence, that Biden had been fed questions and was reading prepared answers off a teleprompter. Trump was upset because Biden used big words like “rigorous” and “exhorted,” pronounced them correctly, and knew what they meant. 

Biden blasted Trump for his bumbling effort to address the COVID-19 outbreak. He said the self-styled “wartime” president had “surrendered” and had no plan to address a renewed spread. 

The Centers for Disease Control reported that for the day, the U.S. set a record for most cases in a 24-hour period: 

54,357 fresh infections.

 

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If we all wore masks, we could avoid an additional five percent reduction in GDP.  

Goldman Sachs analysis

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WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Mr. Trump turned up on Fox Business for a fluff interview with Blake Burman. Burman started off by noting that Goldman Sachs estimated a national mandate that we all wear masks would slow the spread of the virus. If we all wore masks, we could avoid an additional five percent reduction in GDP.  If, Burman wondered, such a mandate would be a “net positive” for the economy, and save thousands of lives, why didn’t Trump call for a mandate? 

The president claimed he was “all for masks” in the fight against the virus. He said he had worn one himself. People had even seen him! (Melania, Barron?) Burman let Trump get by with saying he liked the way he looked in a mask. Trump said he thought he resembled the Lone Ranger, assuming the Lone Ranger had been a doughy, orange septuagenarian with bad hair. 

And wore a mask over his mouth and nose, not his eyes.

The Lone Ranger.