Donald Trump is undoubtedly - & by far - the worst President in US history.
Despite his bitter, fanatical & delusional supporters, the whole world - & most Americans - know this to be true.
It is now beyond a shadow of any doubt.
During the Great Recession of 2007-9, the US economy lost approximately 9 million jobs.
By April, the pandemic recession had seen nearly 10 million unemployment claims in just two weeks, & the unemployment rate was 13% - the highest since the Great Depression ended 80 years ago.
Far worse is the human carnage.
The richest nation on earth has more confirmed #coronavirus cases than anywhere else.
Trump claimed on February 26th: “Within a couple of days, it’s going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
In April he argued that if the death toll was 100,000 to 200,000 — higher than the combined US fatalities in all of its wars since 1945 — it would be proof that he’d done “a very good job.”
279,000 Americans have died - so far - from #COVID19. A number which could still double.
His handling of the pandemic has been an abject fiasco because the #coronavirus was the most foreseeable catastrophe in US history.
9/11 caused 2,606 deaths in the World Trade Center & surrounding area.
2,777 #COVID19-related deaths in the #USA is the single-day record.
The warnings about the Pearl Harbor & 9/11 were obvious only in retrospect.
With #coronavirus, it didn’t require any top-secret intelligence to see what was coming.
The alarm was sounded in January by his own advisors, by experts in the media, & by Democrat Joe Biden:
The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the #coronavirus in China on January 3rd.
Within days, US spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to America in the President’s Daily Brief.
But Trump wasn’t listening.
Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar briefed Trump on January 18th, telling colleagues that Trump believed he was ‘alarmist’: he couldn't get Trump to focus on #COVID19.
On January 22nd, Trump lied “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
In the days and weeks after Azar alerted him about the virus, Trump spoke at eight rallies and golfed six times as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Trump’s failure to focus sowed significant public confusion & contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts.”
His inaction also allowed critical failures in rolling out enough tests or stockpiling sufficient protective equipment & ventilators.
South Korea & the United States discovered their first #cornavirus cases on the same day.
South Korea now has just 540 dead, the #USA, 279,012.
This fiasco is monumental.
Inevitably, he blamed others for his abject failure, including China, the media, governors, Barack Obama & the impeachment managers.
His mantra is: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
He's a corrupt liar, & his presidency has been cataclysmic.
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Echoing objections to social-media fuelled violence from the government of the UK & others, the Chamber of Progress, a tech business advocacy group, is urging delusional adolescent billionaire Musk to take his leadership role at @X more seriously - or resign if he cannot do so.
Since July 29 when right-wing influencers made false claims on Twitter/@X & other social media platforms that falsely blamed the murder of three children on Muslims & asylum-seeking immigrants, dozens of far-right #FarageRiots erupted around the nation.
The #FarageRiots started with a lie – a fake name and false information that suggested the teenager alleged to have killed three young girls in #Southport was a Muslim asylum seeker. He was neither.
There is an uncomfortable hypocrisy at the heart of this story, which is that people didn’t react the same way when, earlier this year, a white man killed a 14-year-old black boy, Daniel Anjorin, with a sword.
While that perpetrator was treated as a horrific anomaly, the Southport attacker was viewed by racist rioters as representative of migrants & Muslims, despite being neither.
A psychologist explains the cognitive biases and psychological responses behind this disparate treatment.
Researchers have developed & articulated the concept of “everyday extremism” to acknowledge that extreme narratives derived from non-mainstream sources can become a part of mainstream political discourse via social media.
As usual, @elonmusk takes a half-truth, removes important context, then selectively presents a misleading claim implying something about contemporary society, in this case mobilising a 'white victimhood' racist dog whistle narrative to fuel anger, division, & engagement.
Musk presents the claim that the etymological origins of the word word slave derives solely from the exploitation of 'white people', rather than, say, emphasising how religious texts from Judaism, Islam & Christianity all recognise slaves as a separate class of people in society.
Before examining Musk's misleading claim, it's worth knowing that the word 'Slav' refers to a member of the most numerous ethnic & linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern & southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean.
#NEW opinion poll: "73% of the British public say that the riots are shaming rather than standing up for Britain, & the public overwhelmingly believe that those helping clear up after the riots (87%) represent British values." - @Moreincommon_ 🇬🇧
Rather than attitudes to the riots sitting in two contrasting pro- & anti-riots camps, public opinion is akin to Russian Dolls: small groups are willing to condone the riots but much bigger groups with opinions cited as motivation for the violence condemn it without hesitation.
The smallest group are those who express support for the unrest: 7% of the public say they are ashamed Britain is a multi-ethnic country; 8% think violent demonstrations outside asylum seeker accommodation are acceptable; & the 11% who have a positive opinion of Tommy Robinson.