The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Shiela_M]

From a novel about the NW Frontier in India:

"[He] had been plotting evil. He was a man who would have shrivelled up, become atrophied, in an atmosphere of decency — he would have died."

(W. A. Fraser. Caste. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922.)

Between missbarbara's educational tidbits and now I'm seeing what looks  like APA citations, I'm going to start feeling like I'm back in college.  Except with porn 

[Gonfalon]

From a novel about the NW Frontier in India:

"[He] had been plotting evil. He was a man who would have shrivelled up, become atrophied, in an atmosphere of decency — he would have died."

(W. A. Fraser. Caste. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922.)

Between missbarbara's educational tidbits and now I'm seeing what looks  like APA citations, I'm going to start feeling like I'm back in college.  Except with porn 

Sorry for the non-standard format. I should have reversed the name, but I figured it might look odd to some readers. As in: Fraser, W. A. Caste.

[MintJulie]

Between missbarbara's educational tidbits and now I'm seeing what looks  like APA citations, I'm going to start feeling like I'm back in college.

Except I hated college. 
And I love KB.

[Shiela_M]

Between missbarbara's educational tidbits and now I'm seeing what looks  like APA citations, I'm going to start feeling like I'm back in college.

Except I hated college. 
And I love KB.

I did tech school so all but 2 or 3 of my classes were online.

[Athos_131]

Between missbarbara's educational tidbits and now I'm seeing what looks  like APA citations, I'm going to start feeling like I'm back in college.

Except I hated college. 
And I love KB.

Those posts are better than 99% of the content here to me.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Athos_131]

Lawyers allege abuse of migrant women by gynecologist for Georgia ICE detention center

WASHINGTON — A nurse who worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Irwin County, Georgia and four lawyers representing clients there are claiming that immigrant women are routinely being sent to a gynecologist who has left them bruised and performed unnecessary procedures, including hysterectomies.

The doctor, who three lawyers identified as Dr. Mahendra Amin, practicing in Douglas, Georgia, has continued to see women from the Irwin County Detention Center for the past several years despite complaints from his patients.

Amin was the subject of a Justice Department investigation in 2015 for making false claims to Medicaid and Medicare. As a result, he and other doctors involved paid $525,000 in a civil settlement, according to the Justice Department.

The lawyers identified the doctor after a whistleblower complaint to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security was filed by Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse inside the facility. She said in the complaint that detainees were not getting Covid-19 tests and other needed medical care. The complaint was first reported by the Intercept.

Wooten worked full time as a licensed practical nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, until being demoted in July.

The complaint cites both allegations from unnamed detained immigrants and Wooten.

The facility houses immigrant detainees in the custody of ICE, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security. It also houses inmates for Irwin County and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network filed the complaint on behalf of detained immigrants at the center and Wooten.

Wooten was demoted in July from a full-time nurse to “as-needed” after missing work because she had coronavirus symptoms. She said she believes the demotion was in retaliation for raising coronavirus protocol concerns, according to the complaint.

She also said that there was not enough active testing of the immigrant detainees for the coronavirus and that the facility was not “reporting all these cases that are positive,” meaning the number of cases at the facility was possibly much higher than that reported by ICE.

Elizabeth Mathren, a lawyer who represented several women who saw Amin through her work with the Southern Poverty Law Center beginning in 2017, said she brought their complaints to managers of the detention facility.

"Two to three years ago, I had a face-to-face conversation with (someone in management). I was so disturbed. I begged her to get my client treatment with a different doctor. I told her I had heard from multiple people that he was rough, that they were scared to go to him, that they didn't understand what he was doing," said Elizabeth Mathren, who represented several women through her work with the Southern Poverty Law Center beginning in 2017.

Mathren she had at least one client report bruising after being examined by Amin.

But Mathren said immigrant women have continually been sent to Amin, despite concerns. The facility is privately contracted by LaSalle Corrections. A company spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by NBC News.

A woman who answered the phone at Amin’s practice hung up the phone when asked for comment.

Benjamin Osorio, another lawyer representing women in the Irwin County facility, said two of his clients received hysterectomies that they believe may have been unnecessary.

One of the women, who is of child-bearing age, was told she needed to have a hysterectomy after Amin found ovarian cysts, Osorio said. She was advised that they were cancerous, but her records indicate she was not given a biopsy to confirm the cancer, he said. In another case, he said, his client was told she had stage 4 cervical cancer and would need a hysterectomy and chemotherapy. But after her hysterectomy, an oncologist in Charlotte said she did not have cancer, according to Osorio.

Another lawyer, Sarah Owings, said she has heard of many women who are told they have ovarian cysts that need to be removed or drained.

"I don’t think this is necessarily a systemic sterilization by ICE. I think this is the kind of thing that is allowed to flourish in the course of poor oversight and terrible, inhumane conditions of confinement," said Owings.

In her complaint, Wooten said some of her patients told her they were afraid to go to a doctor they called the "uterus collector," according to the complaint.

In an interview with NBC News, Wooten said, "I had a detainee that asked me, she said, 'What is he doing Ms. Wooten, collecting all of our uteruses?' And I just looked at her puzzled because I didn’t have an answer."

In a statement responding to Wooten's allegations, a spokesperson for ICE said, "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not comment on matters presented to the Office of the Inspector General, which provides independent oversight and accountability within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE takes all allegations seriously and defers to the OIG regarding any potential investigation and/or results. That said, in general, anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics, should be treated with the appropriate skepticism they deserve.”

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment based on the lawyers' allegations.

"The new shocking revelations about the abuses against women's bodies must lead to the immediate closure of this horrid facility," Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director at Project South, said in a statement. "ICE and the private prison corporation must be held accountable."

The agency said it is committed to the safety and welfare of those in its custody and its facilities are subject to regular inspections. The Irwin County Detention Center has repeatedly been found to operate in compliance with ICE’s performance standards, the agency said.

Shredding medical request forms
Wooten alleged in her complaint that men and women at the detention center “overwhelmingly reported not being tested for Covid-19 from March until August 18,” when those in the ICE facility were given the option to be tested.

A woman reported that 100 women slept in a unit where women “coughed, had fever and other discomforts, but officers did not listen to them when they reported their health problems,” and that they were never tested for Covid-19, according to the complaint.

“After demanding that the sick women be taken to the medical unit, she reported that the women were finally taken but were brought back within an hour and just given pain killers,” the complaint said.

Wooten also claimed that it was common practice for a sick call nurse to shred medical request forms from detainees requesting to go to the medical unit and fabricate records such as vital signs without seeing the patient seeking help, the complaint said.

ICE said in its statement that its epidemiologists have been continually tracking the outbreak, regularly updating its infection prevention and control protocols, and issuing guidance to staff for the management of potential exposure among detainees.

ICE said on its website that as of Sept. 13, there were 42 confirmed cases of Covid-19 among its detainees at Irwin County Detention Center, and 5,772 in all of its facilities, with six overall deaths.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Lois]

Good post there Athos!

Meanwhile Trump is talking about "herd mentality" when he means herd immunity.  Freudian slip, no doubt.

Yes we could try for herd immunity by allowing COVID-19 to spread unhindered, but the death count will be very high.  Clearly the number of people that have been infected with the virus has been higher, perhaps 10-15%?  And that has resulted in 194,092 deaths.  How many more deaths will result by the time 80% are infected? 

[_priapism]

Forced hysterectomies on a mass scale?  

eu·gen·ics
/yo͞oˈjeniks/
noun

The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.

43 days until the election... or as I call it, “The calm before the storm.”

[Jed_]

Meanwhile Trump is talking about "herd mentality" when he means herd immunity.  Freudian slip, no doubt.

By herd mentality, maybe he meant the lower right corner here:

[Gonfalon]

Forced hysterectomies on a mass scale?  

eu·gen·ics
/yo͞oˈjeniks/
noun

The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.

Galton's suggestion was to encourage gifted people to marry a little earlier. Early marriage = more children. It might take centuries, but eventually the proportion of gifted people in the population should rise. He said we owe it to the future to consider something along those lines.

[_priapism]

Forced hysterectomies on a mass scale?  

eu·gen·ics
/yo͞oˈjeniks/
noun

The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.

Galton's suggestion was to encourage gifted people to marry a little earlier. Early marriage = more children. It might take centuries, but eventually the proportion of gifted people in the population should rise. He said we owe it to the future to consider something along those lines.

Lavinia, I have wondered if you might not be a new name for a former member, but I really appreciate your thoughtful posts, and hope you will be a permanent member of our community. 

[Gonfalon]

Lavinia, I have wondered if you might not be a new name for a former member, but I really appreciate your thoughtful posts, and hope you will be a permanent member of our community. 

Thank you for the kind words. I've contributed to several discussion boards in my time, have even hosted a few, but this is my first time on KB.

To borrow the words of an elderly doctor I once knew, "I'll be around for as long as I can see my shadow." 

[Athos_131]

The President*'s Town Hall Was a Train Wreck Atop a Dumpster Fire

Evidently, while I was watching a fine NBA playoff game that did not end the way I was hoping it would end, the president* had another unfortunate encounter with his alleged fellow humans, this time in Pennsylvania in a "town hall" format which, alas for the president*, meant questions from actual humans with actual concerns. The result, by all accounts, was a train wreck atop a car wreck upon a dumpster fire at the bottom of a cliff.

First, as to the customary mendacity, I think this brilliant solo ride from CNN's Daniel Dale says it all.

There was just so much lying, Don. I'm going to go quickly here. He said literally to stop me whenever you need to. He said again, Democrats won't protect people with pre- existing conditions. That is nonsense, as a voter told him, Democrats created those protections. He insisted he didn't praise China on the virus. He did so repeatedly. We know that. He claimed that nobody knew at the time he was praising China that seniors were especially susceptible to the virus. That's one of the first things we learned out of China, and out of Italy, and the U.S.
He claimed Biden said in March that the pandemic was, quotes, totally over exaggerated. I can find no evidence that Biden ever said that. He said at Winston Churchill was kind of like him playing down stuff because he went on rooftops in London during the Nazi bombing and told people everything is going to be good. Churchill did not speak from the rooftops and did not say everything was going to be good. He warn of suffering and danger. Trump said that he fired James Mattis, Mattis resigned. He said that protesters took over 20 percent of Seattle, it was a six block area. Nowhere close to 20 percent. He took credit again for sending in the National Guard in Minneapolis saying this happened after a week and a half of violence there. It was not even close to a week and a half. It was days and the Democratic Governor is the one who activated the guard. He said he essentially repealed Obamacare by getting rid of individual mandate, not even close to true with the Medicaid expansion, pre-existing conditions protections, other stuff remains.
He said the coverage were empty of ventilators. His administration admits he inherited about 16,000 from Obama. He did his usual false boast about so-called bans on travel from China and Europe. They were not complete bans. He said stocks are owned by, quote, everybody. Just about half of Americans own stocks. He repeated his nonsense about testing causing cases, testing merely reveals and helps fight cases. He said that Biden has agreed to a Bernie Sanders style of socialized health care. He fought Sanders on that issue. He has very much not agreed to a Sanders-style plan. And, Don, this is a preliminary list. I have hours of fact checking tonight to do because there's even more than this. So this was just a firehose of lying, again, from the president.
(You have to watch the video to get the full flavor of this masterpiece. In the middle, when Dale is really rolling, Don Lemon is like, "Keep going, Dan. I'm just gonna grab my Big Gulp here.")
The true highlight, however, came from Ellesia Blaque, an assistant professor who pinned the president* on his attempts to demolish the Affordable Care Act while insisting that he also is "taking care" of people with pre-existing conditions in his great new imaginary healthcare plan which, like tomorrow, is always a day away. And, once she had him pinned, she didn't let him up.

BLAQUE: Mr. President, I was born with a disease called sarcoidosis, and from the day I was born, I was considerable uninsurable. That disease started in my skin, moved to my eyes, into my optic nerves, and when I went to graduate school, into my brain. When it hit my brain, I was automatically eligible for disability for the rest of my life. I chose instead to get a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a Ph.D. and become a professor.
TRUMP: That’s great.
BLAQUE: It is great, except I still have similar healthcare problems. It costs me -- with co-pays, I'm still paying almost $7,000 a year in addition to the co-pay. And should preexisting conditions, which ObamaCare brought into…brought to fruition be removed?
TRUMP: No.
BLAQUE: Please stop and let me finish my question, sir.
Whoa there, citizen. This isn't what they planned on at all.

BLAQUE: Should that be removed? Within a 36 to 72-hour period, without my medication, I will be dead. And I want to know what it is that you're going to do assure that people like me who work hard, we do everything we're supposed to do can stay insured. It's not my fault that I was born with this disease. It's not my fault that I'm a black woman, and in the medical community I'm minimized and not taken seriously. I want to know what you are going to do about that.
The most remarkable thing about this debacle was the fact that it was billed as a town hall for "undecided" voters. I simply cannot—and, increasingly, will not—understand anyone who is "undecided" about giving this guy four more years as president* and, thus, four more years to turn constitutional democracy into a SuperFund site. Just to take one facet of that possibility: can you imagine the kind of stumblebum unemployables with whom he will staff his government for a second term? No purportedly serious Republican will come near him. Nobody with any expertise will answer the phone. You're going to end up with an executive branch full of people who make Michael Caputo look like Henry Clay. And you're "undecided" about whether or not this is the outcome you want for the country?

You're lying. You know you are.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Athos_131]

Fact check: Trump made at least 22 false or misleading claims at ABC town hall

President Donald Trump got a rare grilling at an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

He responded to a series of tough questions from Pennsylvania voters, and some more from moderator George Stephanopoulos, much like he responds to easy questions from his favorite conservative television hosts -- with a barrage of dishonesty.
Trump made at least 22 false or misleading claims over the hour-and-a-half event, according to our preliminary count.

Here is a list.
The coronavirus pandemic
Downplaying the virus
Trump was asked why he downplayed the coronavirus. He responded, "Well, I didn't downplay it. I actually -- in many ways I up-played it in terms of action."
Facts First: This is ridiculous spin. Trump admitted to journalist Bob Woodward in a recorded March 19 interview that "I always wanted to play it down" (he claimed he did so to keep the public calm). And we didn't need Woodward's tape to know Trump had downplayed it; this was obvious even back in February and March, when Trump kept wrongly claiming that the situation was under control and that the virus was akin to the flu.
Trump's praise of China
Pressed about how he had initially said China was doing a good job handling the virus, Trump suggested he had not issued such praise: "No, I didn't say one way or the other. I'm not saying one way or the other."
Facts First: Trump repeatedly and effusively praised China and leader Xi Jinping for their handling of the virus situation earlier this year. You can read a list of examples here.
Seniors
Trump said: "So I didn't say anything bad about President Xi initially, because nobody knew much about the disease. Nobody knew the seniors are susceptible."
Facts First: It's just not true nobody knew seniors were susceptible to the virus at the time of Trump's praise. Chinese officials emphasized in January that elderly people with chronic diseases were at the highest risk of serious illness. January media reports around the world talked about the risk to seniors; a January 23 report in the New York Times was headlined "Coronavirus Deaths Are So Far Mostly Older Men, Many With Previous Health Issues." Beginning in February, a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, had one of the first known outbreaks of the virus in the US.
Biden and the pandemic
Trump claimed opponent Joe Biden said in March that the pandemic was "totally over-exaggerated."
Facts First: We could not find any evidence of Biden saying anything like this in March.
Biden did say in late February and early March that people shouldn't "panic" about the virus, but even conservative Breitbart News noted that Biden added in his February comments that "coronavirus is a serious public health challenge" and in March that people shouldn't "downplay" the situation. In other words, he wasn't saying that it was being overblown.
On March 12, Biden delivered a sharp rebuke of Trump's handling of the pandemic and introduced his own plan for addressing the crisis.
Masks
Trump claimed that "a lot of people think that masks are not good." Asked who these people are, Trump said "waiters" -- citing the example of a person he said had been serving him but also touching their mask, which "can't be good."
Facts First: There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that masks help reduce transmission of the coronavirus. And there is no actual evidence that "waiters" generally disagree with this consensus; the example Trump cited did not involve even a single waiter expressing negative sentiments about masks.
Trump was correct when he said that prominent experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, initially advised people against wearing masks. (Fauci later said that he had been worried about a shortage of protective equipment for health care workers.) But that doesn't mean there is a real debate now.
"These face masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Robert Redfield testified to a Senate committee on Wednesday, urging "all Americans" to embrace them because of the "clear scientific evidence that they work, and they are our best defense." He argued that masks might even be a better defense against someone getting Covid-19 than taking a vaccine.
Ventilators
Trump repeated his familiar claim that the "cupboards were bare" of ventilators when he took office.
Facts First: This is not at all true. Trump inherited more than 16,000 ventilators.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to CNN in late June that there had been about 19,000 ventilators in the national stockpile for "many years," including 16,660 ventilators that were ready for immediate use in March 2020. The spokesperson confirmed that none of those 16,660 were purchased by the Trump administration.
As of June 23, the Trump administration had distributed 10,760 ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic, a smaller number than the administration inherited.
You can read a longer fact check here.
Testing and cases
Told that the US has 20% of the world's coronavirus cases and deaths, Trump said, "We have 20% of the cases because of the fact that we do much more testing. If we wouldn't do testing, you wouldn't have cases. You would have very few cases."
Facts First: Testing does not create cases; it reveals them. And testing is a tool used to help prevent the spread of the virus and reduce the number of actual cases. You can read a longer fact check here.
Travel restrictions on China and Europe
Trump claimed that he put "a ban on" China and "a ban on" Europe to address the pandemic.
Facts First: While Trump did restrict travel from China and from much of Europe, neither policy was a "ban": both made exemptions for travel from US citizens, permanent residents, many of their families, and some others -- and the restrictions on Europe exempted entire European countries.
Exemptions from the restrictions
Trump said of his critics' comments about the travel restrictions: "They say that we allowed certain people in, it's true -- but they were American citizens."
Facts First: Again, citizens were not the only people exempted. Also omitted from the prohibition were permanent residents; spouses of citizens and permanent residents; parents or guardians of unmarried citizens or permanent residents under age 21; unmarried siblings under age 21 of unmarried citizens or permanent residents under age 21; and various other categories of people.
Health care
Pre-existing conditions
Trump claimed that he would be "doing a health care plan" that would "protect people with pre-existing conditions." He then said of the Democrats, "They will not do that."
Facts First: This is a complete reversal of reality. Democrats created these protections for people with pre-existing conditions, in Obamacare; Biden was vice president at the time, and he is running on a promise to preserve and strengthen the law. Trump, conversely, has repeatedly tried to get bills passed that would have weakened the protections -- and, as Stephanopoulos pointed out, is currently in court trying to get the entirety of Obamacare overturned.
Trump insisted to Stephanopoulos that he would put forward a "new health care" plan that would protect people. But he has never unveiled any plan that would offer protections equivalent to the ones in Obamacare -- and, regardless, his claim about Democrats is absurd.
The existence of Obamacare
Trump claimed he "essentially ended Obamacare" by repealing the individual mandate that required people to obtain health insurance.
Facts First: The individual mandate, which required Americans to obtain health insurance, was indeed a key part of Obamacare -- but Trump didn't end Obamacare, essentially or otherwise; key parts of the law remain in effect. For example, Trump has not eliminated Obamacare's expansion of the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people, the federal and state marketplaces that allow people to shop for coverage, or the consumer subsidies that help many of them make the purchases.
Biden's health care plan
Trump suggested that Biden has agreed to adopt the "socialized" health care advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders: "He (Biden) agreed to the manifesto, as I call it -- the agreement with Bernie is that you're going to go to socialized medicine."
Facts First: This is misleading. While "socialized" is a vague term, and while Biden does endorse a "public option" to allow people to opt in to a Medicare-like government insurance plan, Biden has not agreed to anything like the "Medicare for All" single-payer proposal Sanders is known for, which would eliminate most private insurance plans. Biden and Sanders clashed on the issue during the Democratic primary.
After Sanders dropped out of the race, Biden and Sanders appointed a task force to make policy recommendations; this is what Trump calls "the manifesto." The task force proposed to try to achieve universal health care through the public option Biden was already running on; it did not endorse any Sanders-style single-payer plan. It says: "Everyone will be eligible to choose the public option or another Affordable Care Act marketplace plan, even those who currently get insurance through their employers, because Democrats believe working people shouldn't be locked in to expensive or insufficient health care plans when better options are available."
Protests, race and policing
Black communities and police
Trump said: "So I just saw a poll where African Americans in this country, Black communities, are 81% in favor of having more police."
Facts First: Trump wrongly described this poll result. In a survey conducted in late June and early July, Gallup found that 20% of Black Americans wanted the police to spend more time in their area; 61% said they wanted the police to spend the same amount of time they current spend. Those numbers add up to 81%, but it's not true that 81% said they want a larger police presence.
Police reform
Asked about how to achieve "common sense police reform," Trump said Republican Sen. Tim Scott had a compromise plan "that everybody pretty much agreed to" -- and that "a lot of Democrats agreed to it but they wouldn't vote for it."
Facts First: It's not true that "everybody" agreed to Scott's proposal. While there was indeed some overlap between the policy proposals in Scott's bill and a bill written by House Democrats, there were also major differences on issues like chokeholds and qualified immunity for officers -- and many Democrats said the Scott bill did not go nearly far enough. Sen. Mazie Hirono called it "half-assed," and Sen. Richard Blumenthal called it "disastrously weak."
The Senate voted 55-45 to begin debate on the bill, denying Scott the 60 votes needed. Just two Democrats and independent Maine Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, voted to begin debate.
Seattle protesters
Trump said of protesters in Seattle: "They took over a big chunk of the city -- 20% of the city."
Facts First: Trump's figure was not even close to correct. In June, protesters set up a self-proclaimed "autonomous zone" covering six blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood -- a significant development, no doubt, but a tiny fraction of the whole city.
The protest was cleared out by local authorities at the beginning of July.
Minnesota and the National Guard
Trump again took credit for the National Guard deployment in Minnesota to address violent protests following the killing of George Floyd, claiming that these protests "went on for a week or a week and a half" before the governor "allowed us to bring in the National Guard."
Facts First: Minnesota's Democratic governor, Tim Walz, was the one who activated the Guard -- and Walz, a Guard veteran, did so two days after the violent protests began, more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself.
You can read a longer fact check here.
Crime in New York City
Trump said: "Look at New York. New York was a very safe city. Rudy Giuliani did a fantastic job. The city was safe and then, all of a sudden, we have a mayor -- who starts cutting the police force, and crime is up 100%, 150%. I saw one form of crime up 300%."
Facts First: There is no major crime category in New York City that is currently up "300%," whether you are doing a weekly or monthly or yearly comparison, according to official data that is released on a weekly basis. And while there has been a major increase in New York City shootings this year -- as Trump alluded to, the number of shooting incidents has been up about 150% year-over-year -- the city remains safer than it was in Giuliani's final year in office, 2001, even after Giuliani presided over a major decline in crime.
What Trump didn't mention was that the improvements continued under Giuliani successors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio. So while the 2020 increases are concerning, they are increases from a relatively low 2019 level.
For example, New York City had 319 murders in 2019, less than half the 649 murders of 2001; while 2020 is on pace to be worse for murder than 2019, with 305 murders as of September 6, 2020 is still on pace to be much better than 2001.
Assorted topics
Stock ownership
When Stephanopoulos said that people at the top of the economic ladder, who own stocks, are doing well, Trump interjected and said, "George, stocks are owned by everybody."
Facts First: Trump could fairly point out that it's not just the super-wealthy who own stocks, but it's also not true that stocks are owned by "everybody." In polling from March and April, Gallup found that 55% of American adults reported owning stock this year, the same percentage as last year. And wealthy people have long owned far more stock than people in lower income groups.
The departure of James Mattis
As Trump did on Fox News earlier on Tuesday, he claimed at the town hall that he had fired James Mattis as defense secretary.
Facts First: Trump did not fire Mattis; Mattis resigned in December 2018 because of policy differences with Trump,saying in a resignation letter that Trump deserved a secretary of defense whose views were "better aligned" with the president's.
Trump forced Mattis to leave the government two months earlier than the departure date Mattis had chosen upon his resignation, but that is still not a firing.
Mattis and ISIS
Repeating more of the same sentiments he expressed on Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said at the town hall that Mattis "didn't do good on ISIS" and that "I took over 100% of the ISIS caliphate."
Facts First: While the final remnants of the caliphate were eradicated in March 2019, more than two months after Mattis's departure, it's misleading for Trump to suggest this was his own accomplishment that Mattis had nothing to do with. Much of the progress in liberating the caliphate occurred during Mattis's tenure as secretary of defense between January 2017 and January 2019.
There was also substantial progress in the battle against ISIS in 2016, under President Barack Obama. And Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting.
Churchill and Trump
Defending his decision to conceal the severity of the virus from the American public, Trump again invoked the late UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill -- saying Churchill was "not so honest" when he stood on London rooftops during Nazi bombings and told the public "everything's going to be good," but that he was still a "great leader" by keeping people calm.
Facts First: Churchill did not give speeches from the rooftops, though he sometimes did watch the bombing from rooftops, and did not say "everything's going to be good" or generally play down the Nazi threat. Rather -- as Churchill scholars have told CNN -- he was generally blunt about the threat of death and severe suffering, warning citizens repeatedly about hardships to come.
You can read a longer fact check here.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Athos_131]

If he wants to abidcate to Joe Biden so he can do a national mask mandate I've no problem with it.

What does the Nazi say?

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[joan1984]

  A National Mandate to wear a mask is Unconstitutional, as Joe Biden read off the teleprompter, a day or more after he read that he would make it mandatory... the second Biden Teleprompter Writer is correct.

  Try to keep up...

If he wants to abidcate to Joe Biden so he can do a national mask mandate I've no problem with it.

What does the Nazi say?

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Athos_131]

You admitted it.

  A National Mandate to wear a mask is Unconstitutional, as Joe Biden read off the teleprompter, a day or more after he read that he would make it mandatory... the second Biden Teleprompter Writer is correct.

  Try to keep up...

If he wants to abidcate to Joe Biden so he can do a national mask mandate I've no problem with it.

What does the Nazi say?

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Athos_131]

Try to keep up.

If you watch the video, Trump asks why Joe Biden didn't mandate masks.

Joe Biden is currently a private citizen.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

[Shiela_M]

Try to keep up.

If you watch the video, Trump asks why Joe Biden didn't mandate masks.

Joe Biden is currently a private citizen.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BanTheNaziFromKB

Joe Biden hasnt held a political office since jan 2017.  He has no authority to mandate anything

[Athos_131]

White House abandoned plan to send 650 million face masks across the U.S. in April, report says

The U.S. Postal Service had drafted a press release announcing plans to send 650 million masks out across the U.S. early in the coronavirus crisis, but the White House ultimately abandoned the plan, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The plan would have sent a pack of five reusable masks to every residential address in the country, the Post reported, citing one of thousands of internal post office documents obtained by watchdog group American Oversight.

“Our organization is uniquely suited to undertake this historic mission of delivering face coverings to every American household in the fight against the COVID-19 virus,” then-Postmaster General and CEO Megan J. Brennan said in the scrapped news release, which was dated to be released in April.

Brennan was succeeded in the summer by Louis DeJoy, whose drastic cost-cutting measures at the government agency have sparked controversy in advance of the 2020 election.

The idea to have USPS ship out personal protective equipment came from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Post reported. The reported plan was to start distributing masks in April, with Covid-19 hot spots getting first priority.

The newly uncovered documents suggest the government had initially intended to utilize the Postal Service in early pandemic response plans. The distribution program would have come at a time when President Donald Trump largely resisted wearing a mask.

The White House ultimately canceled the program, senior administration officials told the Post.

“There was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic,” one administration official told the newspaper. Trump had told journalist Bob Woodward in March that he sought to downplay the virus because he didn’t want to create a panic, according to recently released recordings.

HHS later launched Project: America Strong, a $675 million program to distribute face masks across the country. An HHS spokesperson told the Post around 600 million masks have been distributed out of the 650 million set aside.

The USPS declined to comment on the reports. HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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