Trump says US COVID-19 death toll could reach 100,000
On the roster: White House faces bad news on lockdown results – Pick six: Consensus emerges on battlegrounds – Senate can’t comply with Biden probe request – Justice Department backs church in corona suit – Tiger queen
WHITE HOUSE FACES BAD NEWS ON LOCKDOWN RESULTS
NYT: “As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750. The projections, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now. … ‘While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,’ Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump’s former commissioner of food and drugs, said [to CBS News]. ‘We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point.’”
Trump nudges up expected death toll, vows more relief spending – Bloomberg: “President Donald Trump promised more federal help for Americans left jobless by by the pandemic and vowed to press ahead with reopening the economy, addressing the nation in a televised town hall event at the Lincoln Memorial as coronavirus cases and deaths continue to mount. In the opening minutes of the event, broadcast by Fox News, Trump revised upward the number of Americans he expects to be killed by the virus. ‘We’re going to lose anywhere between 75, 80 to 100,000,’ he said. He had said in April he hoped deaths would total less than 60,000; the number of dead so far is more than 67,000. ‘Now we have to get it back open,’ Trump said, addressing the economic fallout of the shutdown. Trump’s first question, by video, came from an Alabama woman who said she had been unable to apply for unemployment, hadn’t received a federal stimulus check and was feeding her family on donations. ‘There’s more help coming,’ Trump said.”
Promises vaccine: ‘you’re going to have it by the end of the year’ – National Review: “President Donald Trump stated that he is ‘very confident’ the U.S. will discover a coronavirus vaccine in the next seven months, following news that his administration has organized a ‘Manhattan Program-esque’ project to fast-track development. ‘We are very confident that we’re going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year,’ Trump told Fox News during a town hall on Sunday night. ‘We think we’re going to have a vaccine by the end of this year. We’re pushing very hard.’ … Pharmaceutical companies, the government, and the military are pooling their efforts, with the goal of 300 million vaccine doses available for Americans by the start of 2021. Experts have been bearish on the prospects of a vaccine in 2020, with most predicting twelve to 18 months before one is widely available to the public.”
At memorial to slain Lincoln, Trump says he’s had it worse – WaPo: “Sitting inside the cavernous Lincoln Memorial on Sunday for Fox News’s virtual town hall, President Donald Trump appeared to draw inspiration from his surroundings when asked about why he uses divisive language and dodges questions during White House coronavirus briefings. ‘I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there,’ Trump said from his perch on a high-backed stool, pointing at the imposing marble statue of martyred president Abraham Lincoln in the background. Lincoln was assassinated in April, 1865. ‘They always said, ‘Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln,’’ Trump continued. ‘I believe I am treated worse.’”
Pence regrets not wearing mask – Politico: “Vice President Mike Penceon Sunday said that he should have worn a mask when visiting the Mayo Clinic, a reversal that came after a harsh backlash for not adhering to the hospital’s policy during the coronavirus pandemic. ‘I didn’t think it was necessary, but I should have worn a mask at the Mayo Clinic and I wore it when I visited the ventilator plant in Indiana’ two days later, Pence said at a Fox News virtual town hall on Sunday, nodding sheepishly. Pence on Tuesday toured the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he met with hospital staff and a patient. According to reporters who were there, every other person present wore a mask. The vice president has said since he is constantly tested for coronavirus and since the mask prevents people from transmitting the virus, he didn’t believe he had to wear one. He reiterated that belief at Sunday’s town hall.”
Small businesses collapsing – The Atlantic: “The government is engaged in an unprecedented effort to save such companies as pandemic-related shutdowns stretch into the spring. But Washington’s policies are too complicated, too small, and too slow for many firms: Across the United States, millions of small businesses are struggling, and millions are failing. The great small-business die-off is here, and it will change the landscape of American commerce, auguring slower growth and less innovation in the future. Small businesses went into this recession more fragile than their larger cousins: Before the crisis hit, half of them had less than two weeks’ worth of cash on hand, making it impossible to cover rent, insurance, utilities, and payroll through any kind of sustained downturn. And the coronavirus downturn has indeed been shocking and sustained: Data from credit-card processors suggest that roughly 30 percent of small businesses have shut down during the pandemic.”
THE RULEBOOK: THANKS GUYS
“The history of Great Britain is the one with which we are in general the best acquainted, and it gives us many useful lessons. We may profit by their experience without paying the price which it cost them.” – John Jay,Federalist No. 5
TIME OUT: MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU
In honor of Star Wars Day here’s a look at how the NYT has reviewed the saga over the years. NYT: “For the movie that started it all (technically Episode IV), [Senior Critic at the time Vincent] Canby identified many of the writer-director George Lucas’s influences, including ‘Quo Vadis?,’ ‘Buck Rogers,’ ‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘Superman,’ ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew,’ the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. ‘The way definitely not to approach ‘Star Wars,’’ Canby cautioned, ‘is to expect a film of cosmic implications or to footnote it with so many references that one anticipates it as if it were a literary duty. It’s fun and funny.’ Though he got in a dig at the plot — ‘the story of ‘Star Wars’ could be written on the head of a pin and still leave room for the Bible’ — Canby complimented Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (as Luke, Leia and Han Solo), noting that ‘everyone treats his material with the proper combination of solemnity and good humor that avoids condescension’…”
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SCOREBOARD
TRUMP JOB PERFORMANCE
Average approval: 45 percent
Average disapproval: 49.8 percent
Net Score: -4.8 points
Change from one week ago: ↓ 1.6 points
[Average includes: PRRI: 43% approve – 54% disapprove; IBD: 44% approve – 44% disapprove; Gallup: 49% approve – 47% disapprove; USA Today/Suffolk University: 43% approve – 53% disapprove; NBC News/WSJ: 46% approve – 51% disapprove.]
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