Trump told his biographer that he “always felt that I was in the military” because of his time at New York Military Academy, a boarding school he had been sent to in his youth. He explained that he’d received “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”
Trump made the remark after being gifted the medal by a veteran wounded in Iraq.
The comment shed doubt on whether Trump knew what a Purple Heart was awarded for, as few wish to be injured or killed while serving in order to receive the medal.
A Purple Heart medal. Sarah Blansett / Military.com
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and US stimulus packages, Democrats pushed for increased funding for absentee and vote-by-mail options. The proposal was for $400 million to be distributed through the federal Election Assistance Commission and subsequently distributed to the states to ensure that voting would be possible for all, with equal access, even if the pandemic persisted. Critics said the funding suggested was still far too little for such a nation-wide initiative.
During a Fox & Friends interview, Trump declared, “The things they had in there were crazy. They had things – levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Trump openly admitting if we made voting easier in America, Republicans wouldn't win elections
Trump: "The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." pic.twitter.com/x5HmX6uogo
When asked about his comments at a press conference, Trump said, “I think that mail in voting is a terrible thing. I think if you vote, you should go, and even the concept of early voting is not the greatest.” Several states allow for voting by mail, and Oregon, Washington, and Colorado do so exclusively.
He had also questioned the validity of mail-in ballots during the campaign.
After a 2019 mass shooting in El Paso that left 22 dead and 24 injured, Trump visited the scene to meet with survivors and first responders.
In one of the photos tweeted by wife Melania, he had a smile and a thumbs up as he stood next to her while she held an infant that had been orphaned by the killer. The infant suffered broken fingers as his mother collapsed on him to shield him from the attack.
I met many incredible people in Dayton, Ohio & El Paso, Texas yesterday. Their communities are strong and unbreakable. @potus and I stand with you! pic.twitter.com/SHzV6zcVKR
On March 29, Trump tweeted multiple times to brag about his press conferences’ ratings amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Because the “Ratings” of my News Conferences etc. are so high, “Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers” according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.” said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!
“President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise…
On that day, the United States reported a total of over 161,000 confirmed cases and 3,000 deaths, more than 9/11.
He later again boasted of his television ratings on April 21, when the US had 824,229 confirmed cases and suffered 45,536 deaths.
I’ve had great “ratings” my whole life, there’s nothing unusual about that for me. The White House News Conference ratings are “through the roof”(Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale , @nytimes) but I don’t care about that. I care about going around the Fake News to the PEOPLE!
During an interview with Howard Stern in 2008, Trump explained his aversion to blood with a story about when he saw an elderly man fall during a charity ball at Mar-a-Lago.
I was at Mar-a-Lago and we had this incredible ball, the Red Cross Ball, in Palm Beach, Florida. And we had the Marines. And the Marines were there, and it was terrible because all these rich people, they’re there to support the Marines, but they’re really there to get their picture in the Palm Beach Post…
So you have all these really rich people, and a man, about 80 years old—very wealthy man, a lot of people didn’t like him—he fell off the stage. So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.
What happens is, these 10 Marines from the back of the room… they come running forward, they grab him, they put the blood all over the place—it’s all over their uniforms—they’re taking it, they’re swiping [it], they ran him out, they created a stretcher. They call it a human stretcher, where they put their arms out with, like, five guys on each side. I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK. It’s just not my thing.”
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad visited the White House to speak with Trump and plead for help for her Yazidi people. She had been tortured and sold into sex slavery by ISIS, and even after ISIS’ demise, 95,000 Yazidi refugees couldn’t return home because of ongoing struggles between the Kurdish and Iraqi governments.
Trump had been disinterested throughout the meeting, even as Murad recounted, “All this happened to me. They killed my mom, my six brothers. They left behind them.” Trump asked, “Where are they now?” Murad replied, “They killed them. They are in the mass grave in Sinjar, and I’m still fighting just to live in safe. Please do something.” “I know the area very well,” Trump replied. “I’m going to look into it very strongly.”
Trump then asked why she received the Nobel Prize, about which he had to again explain what she had endured.
The Yazidi people and their plight became worldwide news in 2014, when they were forced to flee their homes in the face of an ISIS offensive. 40,000 men, women, and children were surrounded in the Sinjar Mountains until the Obama administration authorized air-strikes and drops of aid to prevent genocide.
Dr. Robert Redfield, appointed to head the Center for Disease Control in 2018, had a long and controversial history with his approach to AIDS.
Dr. Robert Redfield / Wikipedia
During his tenure as a Major at the Walter Reed Medical Institute, Dr. Redfield was one of the architects of Army policy regarding AIDS. It included mandatory testing with no confidentiality, and those that tested positive were quarantined, faced various administrative punishments, or were dishonorably discharged. Redfield explained, “The reason we have done what we have done is that we think it’s good medicine – and it’s medicine that might work in the civilian sector, as well.” He was a proponent of H.R. 2788 that sought to allow HIV testing without consent and force states to have doctors report the names of positive cases.
Redfield wrote an introduction to the book Christians in the Age of AIDS, which read:
It is time to reject the temptation of denial of the AIDS/HIV crisis; to reject false prophets who preach the quick-fix strategies of condoms and free needles; to reject those who preach prejudice; and to reject those who try to replace God as judge.
He also regularly denounced use of condoms and needle exchange programs to prevent its spread throughout his career. The CDC says that proper use of condoms can reduce risk of HIV transmission.
Upon taking office, Redfield claimed that his views had since changed.
Redfield’s predecessor, Brenda Fitzgerald, was appointed by Trump in 2017 and resigned after a report of conflicts of interests involving her investments, including various tobacco stocks.
Vice President Mike Pence, leader of the COVID-19 task force, also has a controversial record with public health and science.
In the video, Biden says, “Because we cannot re-elect … we cannot win this re-election … Excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.” The video cut the rest of what Biden said, “We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign, so join us.”
It is the first video marked as manipulated by Twitter since they announced such measures.
The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.”
