President Trump was interviewed by Eric Bolling for Sinclair Broadcasting:
BOLLING: With COVID, is there anything that you think you could have done differently, if you had a mulligan or a do-over on one aspect of the way you handled it, what would it be?
TRUMP: Not much. Look, it’s all over the world. You have a lot of great leaders, a lot of smart people. It’s all over the world. It came out of China. China should have stopped it.
New York Times: “After weeks of spread and warnings in certain areas, a third surge of coronavirus infections has now firmly taken hold across much of the United States.”
“The latest wave — which is raging most acutely in the Midwest and the West, but is also spreading in various areas around the country — threatens to be the worst of the pandemic yet.”
“Its arrival comes as cooler weather is forcing people indoors, setting up a grueling winter that will test the discipline of many Americans who have grown weary of wearing masks and turning down invitations to see family and friends. Over the last week, the country has averaged about 59,000 new cases a day, the most since the beginning of August. The daily total could soon surpass 75,687, a record previously set on July 16.”
Fargo Forum: Overwhelmed by cases, North Dakota tells residents with COVID-19 to do their own contact tracing.
NPR: “Two new peer-reviewed studies are showing a sharp drop in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all groups, including older patients and those with underlying conditions, suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping patients survive their illness.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has left about 285,000 more people dead in the United States than would be expected in a typical year, two-thirds of them from covid-19 itself and the rest from other causes,” the Washington Post reports.
“The CDC said the novel coronavirus, which causes covid-19, has taken a disproportionate toll on Latinos and Blacks, as previous analyses have noted. But the CDC also found, surprisingly, that it has struck 25- to 44-year-olds very hard: Their ‘excess death’ rate is up 26.5 percent over previous years, the largest change for any age group.”
“The government of Ireland announced a six-week lockdown beginning Wednesday night, becoming the first European country to reimpose a national lockdown,” the New York Times reports.
“The new measures, announced on Monday, are a dramatic U-turn for the government, which just two weeks ago fell short of imposing the highest level of restrictions despite advice from public health experts.”
Daily Yonder: “Covid-19 spread in rural America at a record-breaking pace again last week, adding 160 counties to the red-zone list and bringing the total number of rural Americans who have tested positive for the coronavirus to more than 1 million.”
“Nearly 70% of the nation’s 1,976 rural (nonmetropolitan) counties are now in the red zone, a term used by the White House Coronavirus Task Force to designate localities where the spread of the virus is out of control.”
Large shares of women, seniors and independents now say they’re less likely to trust President Trump for accurate information about COVID-19 since he caught it himself, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.
A FEMA spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the agency has “disposed of” 45 Russian ventilators delivered as part of a US–Russia exchange of medical supplies but never used.
“First, the Aventa-M ventilators required an electrical voltage not compatible in the US, meaning they could not be used without an adapter that hospitals did not have. Weeks later, several of the same models caught fire in Russian hospitals, causing the deaths of six people and prompting the government to halt their manufacture.”
Donald Trump complained to his campaign staff about Dr. Anthony Fauci, including him among people he considers “idiots,” but said he couldn’t fire him because of public perception, Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump: “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”
He added: “Anytime he goes on television” there’s a “bomb,” noting that if he fired Fauci it would be a “bigger bomb.”
Washington Post: “Birx recently confronted Vice President Pence, who chairs the task force, about the acrimony… Birx, whose profile and influence has eroded considerably since Atlas’s arrival, told Pence’s office that she does not trust Atlas, does not believe he is giving Trump sound advice and wants him removed from the task force.”
“Pence did not take sides, but rather told Atlas and Birx to bring data bolstering their perspectives to the task force and to work out their disagreements themselves.”
“The result has been a U.S. response increasingly plagued by distrust, infighting and lethargy, just as experts predict coronavirus cases could surge this winter and deaths could reach 400,000 by year’s end.”
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, warned that the current wave of new coronavirus infections is likely to be the “biggest wave” the nation experiences before a vaccine, CBS News reports.
Said Gottlieb: “We’re going to have to endure this wave of spread right now. And it’s probably likely to be the biggest wave that we endure without the benefit of a vaccinated population.”
Twitter took down a tweet from one of President Trump’s most visible coronavirus task force members, Scott Atlas, that claimed widespread use of face masks does not help slow the spread of COVID-19, Axios reports.
“Gone are the days when President Trump held forth daily at the White House podium flanked by members of his coronavirus task force. And the days when Vice President Mike Pence and other task force officials would head to Trump’s office to brief him immediately after their meetings. The White House won’t say when Trump last met with the task force,” the AP reports.
“In the week since he emerged from coronavirus isolation, Trump has demonstrated new determination to minimize the threat of the virus that has killed more than 215,000 Americans and complicated his chances of winning another four years in the White House.”
The Washington Post reports the virus is surging in 44 states.
Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones (D) took his commitment to defying coronavirus pandemic guidelines to a new level by crowdsurfing at President Trump’s campaign rally in Macon on Friday.
Jones is a Democrat who has endorsed Trump.
“Pfizer’s chief executive said on Friday that the company would not apply for emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine before the third week of November, ruling out President Trump’s assertion that a vaccine would be ready before Election Day on Nov. 3,” the New York Times reports.
“The Trump White House has installed two political operatives at the nation’s top public health agency to try to control the information it releases about the coronavirus pandemic as the administration seeks to paint a positive outlook, sometimes at odds with the scientific evidence,” the AP reports.
Politico: “The coronavirus is engulfing big city hospitals in states including Utah, Wisconsin and Indiana that are running low on nurses and beds and are being forced to set up overflow facilities. With new daily U.S. cases surpassing 62,000 on Thursday, the prospect of swamped intensive care units is prompting some governors who previously resisted public health orders to weigh new restrictions to ease pressure on their health care systems.”
“From the early days of the pandemic, the availability of ICU beds — and hospitals’ ability to treat people who need life-support equipment like ventilators to breathe — has been an important benchmark for whether local health systems can handle outbreaks.”
“The pandemic is spawning new infections at a rate not seen since the end of July. Hot spots began to cluster in parts of Utah, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Missouri, Mississippi and North Dakota as the nationwide average number of daily new cases surged over the past month.”
“The pandemic has come storming back to Europe, and hope of a return to normality is being replaced by a much more ominous prospect: the return to lockdown,” Axios reports.
“Case counts in countries like France and Spain have skyrocketed past the numbers seen during the spring peak. While that’s partially due to more widespread testing, it’s now clear that deaths are climbing too.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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