Trump goes on wild tweetstorm to distract from Fauci testimony
Trump goes on wild tweetstorm to distract from Fauci testimony
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 11:01 AM ET, Tue May 12, 2020
(CNN)Hours before his top medical adviser is expected to contradict his assurances that it's safe to reopen America, President Donald
Trump is on a Twitter tear amplifying conspiracy theories and covering up for his own racially-tinged rhetoric to distract from his failures during the pandemic.
Trump is making unfounded charges against his predecessor Barack Obama and wading into the row over his treatment of an Asian American journalist ahead of an appearance before a Senate committee by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease specialist, and oral arguments before the Supreme Court about Trump's attempt to keep his financial information and tax returns from Congress and New York prosecutors.
In a preview of his likely testimony, Fauci told The New York Times in an email on Monday night: "If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: 'Open America Again,' then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country."
"This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal," Fauci continued.
Trump on Monday accused Democratic-led states of deliberately slowing openings of their economies to hurt him politically in an election year and is ignoring warnings of global health experts that reopening societies will spark new spikes in infections without the massive testing and tracing program that he has failed to put in place.
In an extraordinary display of a boiling temperament in a sitting President, Trump offered his fans counter-programming on Tuesday morning, retweeting misinformation by Fox News opinion hosts that seized on his remarks about "Obamagate" on Monday to claim the last administration mounted an illegal bid to destroy the Trump administration before it started. He also used his wild tweetstorm to cover up for his attack on a CBS News journalist during a news conference Monday by claiming Asian Americans were angry at China over the pandemic.
His conduct was a fresh sign that neither Trump nor his conservative media machine backers want to focus on his erratic handling of the worst public health crisis in 100 years with the death toll now at an unfathomable 80,000 in a pandemic Trump long ignored and is now threatening his reelection hopes.
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https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-reelection/index.html