On Monday, President Donald Trump called a press conference at which he touted recent economic figures that have a semblance of positivity about them as if the preceding months haven’t been full of the loss of millions upon millions of jobs. In the hours before the press conference, Trump posted on Twitter about the millions of jobs that have supposedly been “created,” but many if not most of the newly available jobs are likely just positions coming back that had previously been lost amidst the pandemic. There’s not some magical economic boom — there’s a crisis. Trump lashed out at Democratic vice presidential pick Kamala Harris for her recent criticism over his virus response — laughably, Trump tried to depict her as some kind of anti-vaccine radical.
Harris is not an anti-vaxxer. Neither is her fellow presidential ticket member, presidential nominee Joe Biden. During a recent interview on CNN, Harris simply said that if a vaccine comes out that Trump endorses but public health officials do not, she would not take his word for it that the vaccine was safe. After all, Trump is a liar, who has himself dismissed science when it’s suited him. He has previously claimed, for instance, that the Coronavirus might go away on its own. There’s never been any evidence for that claim.
On Monday, Trump ranted to reporters:
‘Biden and his very liberal running mate — the most liberal person in Congress, by the way, who’s not a competent person, in my opinion, [and] who would destroy this country and destroy this economy — should immediately apologize for the reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric that they are talking right now, talking about endangering lives. It undermines science, and what happens is, all of a sudden you’ll have this incredible vaccine, and because of that fake rhetoric — it’s political rhetoric, that’s all it is, just for politics, because now they see we’ve done an incredible job, and in speed like nobody’s ever seen before. This could have taken two or three years, and instead, it’s going to be done in a very short period of time. We could even have it during the month of October.’
Watch his belligerent rant below:
It is unclear when a vaccine might actually be available — according to the Guardian, nine vaccines were in phase three clinical trials as of last Friday. Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said that he did not think it’s likely that a vaccine will be ready within October.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Trump also claimed that Biden “wants to surrender our country to the virus,” “wants to surrender our families to the violent left-wing mob,” and “wants to surrender our jobs to China.” Trump claimed, subsequently, that he’s “taken in billions and billions of dollars from China,” which “no other president” has supposedly done. He’s lying.
For starters, Biden’s Coronavirus response “plan” is not to “surrender” — that’s pretty much what Trump did. Biden has simply stated that he’d impose economic shutdowns if experts advised him to do so. Biden has also straightforwardly and unequivocally condemned violence, over and over. Also — the money Trump seems to be referring to is income from tariffs on Chinese goods. The tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, not China.
