theintercept--2020-04-14--Coronavirus Has Given the Left a Historic Opportunity. Can They Seize It?

is a conundrum for the left .
It has ignited a widespread need and willingness to help and fight for each other — while foreclosing many of the ways we typically imagine left movements taking shape .
With unemployment ballooning and maps of virus transmission and fatalities revealing the cruel geography of class and race in America , the pandemic has vindicated left critiques , revealing an American economy organized to enable the comfort and safety of the few at the expense of the suffering and sacrifice of the many .
“ It ’ s a trigger event , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Paul Engler , organizer and co-author of “ This Is An Uprising : How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century.
” Yet as major corporations work their will on Capitol Hill , extracting bailouts and reshaping the structure of the economy , no countervailing social movement has found footing to pushback or even articulate clear demands from Congress .
That ’ s despite extraordinary leverage held by Democrats , who control the House of Representatives and , from a political perspective , have far less of a political need than President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As employers shed jobs , traditional unions are scrambling to protect contracts , connect their members with benefits , and pressure Congress to provide relief for their industries .
As one union organizer told me , “ It ’ s a bloodbath.
” Ninety-eight percent of the 307,000 hotel , casino , and food service workers who comprise Unite Here , one of the more militant service sector unions , have been laid off .
As the union ’ s president June D. Taylor told ProPublica , “ Right now , we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vast majority of those laid off in the past few weeks , however , don ’ t have a union fighting for them .
Activists are scrambling to respond to a flood of emergency needs — unsafe “ essential ” workplaces , joblessness , homelessness , loan defaults , unpaid rent , eviction — while simultaneously organizing workers and tenants to extract relief from their employers , landlords , and the state .
To provide for their needs and attempt to organize their grievances into a political force , organizers in Philadelphia have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closest historical model we have [ to the present crisis ] is the Great Depression , ” said David Thompson of Philly Socialists .
“ Back then , unemployed councils were able to get serious reforms and lay the groundwork for future organizing when workers were rehired.
” Multiple organizers I spoke to expressed hope that labor struggles undertaken during the crisis can give workers a taste of collective action — and prepare for an organizing blitz when the economy reopens .
As Thompson noted , Depression-era Unemployed Councils “ seeded ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the militant labor faction that emerged from the strike waves of the 1930s .
Organizers in Portland , Oregon , are also building an Unemployed Council .
Like many of the projects springing up amid the crisis , Philly Socialists hope to inspire collective organizing while providing unconditional care for those in need through “ mutual aid ” projects .
In the early days of the crisis , Google forms proliferated , collecting money and volunteers to deliver groceries , medication , and other necessities to homebound seniors , the disabled , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to bail people out of jail .
Though some of this work has been carried out by apolitical groups ( churches and neighborhood associations ) , “ mutual aid ” finds its roots on the anarchist left , where organizers distinguish “ charity ” ( one-way munificence born of economic and social hierarchies ) from “ solidarity , ” the sense of mutual obligation and empathy generated by living in community .
While charity greases the wheels of an economic system hostile to collective needs , mutual aid reveals its inhumanity .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our work are ‘ serve the people ’ and ‘ fight the power , ’ ” said Thompson .
One of the effects of the coronavirus , however , has been to blur the division between these two buckets of work .
The pandemic has manifested as a crisis of care , demonstrating the intolerable cost of capitalist social relations ; the inability of employers and the state to guarantee health , safety , and security is endemic to a society that favors corporate profits over communal well-being .
As Thompson explained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those in need while dramatizing the absence of a comparable response from bosses , landlords , and the agents of government .
In a system hostile to it , caring for each other can be a radical act .
Nowhere have the twin issues of serving others and fighting the power been so crystallized as among “ essential workers.
” For those it designates , the term is a double edged sword , simultaneously affording care and service workers the respect ( and with it , the power and leverage ) they deserve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employers and the government to force low-income people to work in unsafe conditions .
In hospitals , grocery stores , public transit , and logistics , workers are fighting for the right to care for their coworkers as much as they care for the customer .
Their newly elevated status as “ essential ” is both the means and the principle impediment to achieving a safe and equitable work environment .
Leaders inside “ essential ” workplaces see a turbulent mixture of fear and anger among their co-workers , inciting some to collective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ despair .
“ You shouldn ’ t have to feel scared to go to work or to go home to your family after , ” said Jordan Flowers , whose Amazon warehouse on Staten Island has seen at least 14 confirmed Covid-19 cases .
“ You shouldn ’ t have to choose between your health and your paycheck.
” Flowers and his co-workers organized a 50-person walkout on March 30 to demand the warehouse be closed and cleaned .
Despite promises to improve safety , Amazon workers continue to report uneven implementation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the number of Covid-19 cases in their facilities .
Until these needs are met , worker organizers are promising more disruptions .
There have also been strikes , walkouts , and sickouts at Instacart and Whole Foods ( an Amazon property ) , Target , Perdue Farms , and a host of fast food chains including McDonald ’ s , Burger King , and Taco Bell .
And though it ’ s illegal in many jurisdictions for transit workers to strike , the bus drivers , and train conductors of the Amalgamated Transit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases and 19 deaths from coronavirus , have staged wildcat walk-offs in Birmingham , Alabama , and Detroit , Michigan .
“ More than 300 of the transit agencies where our members work have failed to implement critical changes needed to keep their workers and riders safe , ” said ATU International President John Costa .
“ We are proud to carry emergency service , healthcare , grocery , and retail workers , and those who need care .
But , as ATU International President , I can not in good conscience encourage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of fire without the armor and provisions they need.
” Michelle Miller , who runs coworker.org , an online platform for worker-led organizing , told The Intercept they have seen 50 times the volume of campaigns on their site since early March — their demands evolving as the shape and depth of the crisis emerged .
Workers first petitioned employers to provide personal protective equipment , soap , and hand sanitizer .
( Several retail giants initially prohibited the use of masks or gloves on the job . )
Now , many “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave and hazard pay .
Some , including workers at Staples , are calling for their businesses to shut down .
“ Employees are basically saying , ‘ This business is not essential .
It should not be running .
And you should pay us to stay at home , ” said Miller .
And yet , another effect of this “ front line ” mentality , said Miller , is that workers are being treated — by the media , if not their employers — as authorities on the conditions inside their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worker in Indiana , has compiled a database of confirmed Covid-19 cases at warehouses that is more complete than any numbers being released publicly by the company .
Where mainstream media might previously have mistrusted the claims of protesting workers , that skepticism has been directed instead at employers .
“ The bosses say one thing and do another , ” said Mario Crippen , an Amazon worker who helped organize a walkout at his warehouse in Romulus , Michigan .
“ They tell the news something and do the opposite .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In response to protests , Amazon has implemented rules to require more sanitary practices and social distancing , but workers continue to be punished for taking “ time off task ” to wash their hands .
For workers , Miller says , “ it becomes more clear every week that we are merely grist for their mill.
” Employers , landlords , and government officials have exhibited a range of responses to the crisis , from appeasement or indifference to incompetence and harsh crackdowns .
After he helped organize the walkout at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claiming he had violated a company-imposed quarantine by returning to the warehouse for the protest .
Days later , notes from a meeting of Amazon ’ s senior leadership team were leaked to VICE News , indicating that top executives , including Jeff Bezos , had deliberately sought to smear Smalls to stigmatize the protest .
Doctors and nurses have been threatened with termination , and even fired , for speaking out about insufficient PPE in Washington state , New York , and Illinois .
While workers on the front lines of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sacrifice , their employers continue to cut corners and ignore their complaints .
As Jordan Flowers put it , “ How can we be ‘ essential ’ and ‘ disposable ’ at the same time ?
” “ Some of the most powerful actions we are seeing right now are ‘ care actions , ’ ” said Miller , of coworker.org .
The first collective action taken by many retail workers was simply to wear masks in defiance of their bosses ’ prohibition .
“ It was visual and defiant — and defiant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act of care , ” said Miller .
The politics of the moment , Miller believes , demand an embrace of care , mutual obligation , and an appreciation for human frailty .
“ The narrow , hyper-masculine idea of textbook labor militancy [ i.e .
mass walkouts ] may not be possible nor effective in this moment , ” she said .
Protests are taking new and inventive forms : livestreamed rallies , car processions , and cacerolazo ( the banging of pots and pans popular among social movements in Latin America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writer , and organizer Molly Crabapple has been producing posters and banners for people to hang outside their windows .
“ My nightmare is that after this over , thousands of us will have died , all the small businesses will be bankrupt , tenants will be $ 8,000 in debt , and the city will be a shell , ” Crabapple said .
“ And then all these Jared Kushner-type development bastards will come in , kick us out , and make this city into Dubai .
I can ’ t bear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m trying to do visually is show that the city still belongs to us.
” Activists with Never Again Action , a Jewish-led immigrants rights group , have held “ car rallies ” and “ honk-a-thons ” outside immigration detention facilities in Philadelphia ; Hartford , Connecticut ; Hackensack , New Jersey ; and Central Falls , Rhode Island ; demanding the release of those locked inside .
Still , it ’ s unclear whether these efforts — effective as they may be — will translate into long-term organizing .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the uprising around Covid-19 will be catalyzed within an existing , formal political structure .
“ Traditional organizations aren ’ t designed to absorb people in this new moment , ” says Engler .
Unions have to focus on caring for their members .
Existing grassroots organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America will adjust their mission and structure to accommodate new needs and members , but not quickly enough .
And more radical groups , like Philly Socialists and their counterparts in autonomous tenant unions and solidarity networks across the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all-volunteer operations to be a vehicle for mass upheaval .
In such an environment , says Engler , a vacuum is created — between the tremendous needs and anger of an agitated public and the capacities of existing movement organizations .
An idea , symbol , demand , or action scenario must emerge that can capture and rapidly absorb the inchoate energy of the moment .
Platforms like the People ’ s Bailout , a list of policy demands with support from dozens of left movement organizations is fine , but it puts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Engler tells the organizers he trains , “ Momentum can create alignment ; but alignment does not create momentum.
” Nonetheless , the seeds of an uprising have been planted in the actions we ’ re already taking .
Engler points to the Gandhian concept of “ primary sacrifice , ” simple but meaningful acts of mutual service that can be performed by everyone .
During the Indian Independence Movement , spinning cotton into cloth was the “ primary sacrifice ” — a symbolic gesture that united the people in common activity while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What remains is for something else to emerge , some articulation that captures the moment , like “ We Are the 99 Percent or “ Black Lives Matter ” — a vehicle for mass participation .
When it does , greater risks will be required .
Through small acts of solidarity , we ’ re showing each other that we ’ ll be willing to take them .
Correction : April 15 , 2020 A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Instacart is owned by Amazon .

The coronavirus pandemic is a conundrum for the left. It has ignited a widespread need and willingness to help and fight for each other — while foreclosing many of the ways we typically imagine left movements taking shape.
With unemployment ballooning and maps of virus transmission and fatalities revealing the cruel geography of class and race in America, the pandemic has vindicated left critiques, revealing an American economy organized to enable the comfort and safety of the few at the expense of the suffering and sacrifice of the many.
“It’s a trigger event, the largest one of my lifetime,” said Paul Engler, organizer and co-author of “This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century.” Yet as major corporations work their will on Capitol Hill, extracting bailouts and reshaping the structure of the economy, no countervailing social movement has found footing to pushback or even articulate clear demands from Congress. That’s despite extraordinary leverage held by Democrats, who control the House of Representatives and, from a political perspective, have far less of a political need than President Donald Trump for economic relief packages.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Trigger events, Engler said, create tremendous opportunities for mass movements to form, coalesce existing social forces and organizations, and change the architecture of society. But the bailouts are happening now, before any of that has formed. Even if it had coalesced, most of the traditional tactics of left organizing — marches, rallies, occupations, picket lines — could endanger public health, and the risks of engaging in civil disobedience have risen, as jails have become petri dishes for the virus. That leaves corporate power effectively unopposed in Congress amid the most aggressive rewriting of the social contract in a generation, while workers spend their energy instead helping each other stay alive.
As one union organizer told me, “It’s a bloodbath.” Ninety-eight percent of the 307,000 hotel, casino, and food service workers in Unite Here have been laid off.
As employers shed jobs, traditional unions are scrambling to protect contracts, connect their members with benefits, and pressure Congress to provide relief for their industries. As one union organizer told me, “It’s a bloodbath.” Ninety-eight percent of the 307,000 hotel, casino, and food service workers who comprise Unite Here, one of the more militant service sector unions, have been laid off. As the union’s president June D. Taylor told ProPublica, “Right now, we’re fighting for our survival.”
The vast majority of those laid off in the past few weeks, however, don’t have a union fighting for them. Activists are scrambling to respond to a flood of emergency needs — unsafe “essential” workplaces, joblessness, homelessness, loan defaults, unpaid rent, eviction — while simultaneously organizing workers and tenants to extract relief from their employers, landlords, and the state.
To provide for their needs and attempt to organize their grievances into a political force, organizers in Philadelphia have created an Unemployed Council. “The closest historical model we have [to the present crisis] is the Great Depression,” said David Thompson of Philly Socialists. “Back then, unemployed councils were able to get serious reforms and lay the groundwork for future organizing when workers were rehired.”
Multiple organizers I spoke to expressed hope that labor struggles undertaken during the crisis can give workers a taste of collective action — and prepare for an organizing blitz when the economy reopens. As Thompson noted, Depression-era Unemployed Councils “seeded” the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, the militant labor faction that emerged from the strike waves of the 1930s. Organizers in Portland, Oregon, are also building an Unemployed Council.
Organizers hope that labor struggles undertaken during the crisis can give workers a taste of collective action — and prepare for an organizing blitz when the economy reopens.
Like many of the projects springing up amid the crisis, Philly Socialists hope to inspire collective organizing while providing unconditional care for those in need through “mutual aid” projects.
In the early days of the crisis, Google forms proliferated, collecting money and volunteers to deliver groceries, medication, and other necessities to homebound seniors, the disabled, and immunocompromised. Others are raising funds to bail people out of jail. Though some of this work has been carried out by apolitical groups (churches and neighborhood associations), “mutual aid” finds its roots on the anarchist left, where organizers distinguish “charity” (one-way munificence born of economic and social hierarchies) from “solidarity,” the sense of mutual obligation and empathy generated by living in community. While charity greases the wheels of an economic system hostile to collective needs, mutual aid reveals its inhumanity.
“We like to say the two divisions of our work are ‘serve the people’ and ‘fight the power,’” said Thompson. One of the effects of the coronavirus, however, has been to blur the division between these two buckets of work. The pandemic has manifested as a crisis of care, demonstrating the intolerable cost of capitalist social relations; the inability of employers and the state to guarantee health, safety, and security is endemic to a society that favors corporate profits over communal well-being. As Thompson explained, participating in mutual aid provides for those in need while dramatizing the absence of a comparable response from bosses, landlords, and the agents of government. In a system hostile to it, caring for each other can be a radical act.
Nowhere have the twin issues of serving others and fighting the power been so crystallized as among “essential workers.” For those it designates, the term is a double edged sword, simultaneously affording care and service workers the respect (and with it, the power and leverage) they deserve, while providing a cudgel wielded by employers and the government to force low-income people to work in unsafe conditions. In hospitals, grocery stores, public transit, and logistics, workers are fighting for the right to care for their coworkers as much as they care for the customer. Their newly elevated status as “essential” is both the means and the principle impediment to achieving a safe and equitable work environment.
While charity greases the wheels of an economic system hostile to collective needs, mutual aid reveals its inhumanity.
Leaders inside “essential” workplaces see a turbulent mixture of fear and anger among their co-workers, inciting some to collective action and others to paralyzing panic and despair. “You shouldn’t have to feel scared to go to work or to go home to your family after,” said Jordan Flowers, whose Amazon warehouse on Staten Island has seen at least 14 confirmed Covid-19 cases.
“You shouldn’t have to choose between your health and your paycheck.” Flowers and his co-workers organized a 50-person walkout on March 30 to demand the warehouse be closed and cleaned.
Despite promises to improve safety, Amazon workers continue to report uneven implementation of health measures and evasiveness from management about the number of Covid-19 cases in their facilities. Until these needs are met, worker organizers are promising more disruptions.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
There have also been strikes, walkouts, and sickouts at Instacart and Whole Foods (an Amazon property), Target, Perdue Farms, and a host of fast food chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell. And though it’s illegal in many jurisdictions for transit workers to strike, the bus drivers, and train conductors of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which has reported hundreds of cases and 19 deaths from coronavirus, have staged wildcat walk-offs in Birmingham, Alabama, and Detroit, Michigan.
“More than 300 of the transit agencies where our members work have failed to implement critical changes needed to keep their workers and riders safe,” said ATU International President John Costa. “We are proud to carry emergency service, healthcare, grocery, and retail workers, and those who need care. But, as ATU International President, I cannot in good conscience encourage my members to go into the line of fire without the armor and provisions they need.”
Michelle Miller, who runs coworker.org, an online platform for worker-led organizing, told The Intercept they have seen 50 times the volume of campaigns on their site since early March — their demands evolving as the shape and depth of the crisis emerged. Workers first petitioned employers to provide personal protective equipment, soap, and hand sanitizer. (Several retail giants initially prohibited the use of masks or gloves on the job.) Now, many “essential workers” are calling for sick leave and hazard pay. Some, including workers at Staples, are calling for their businesses to shut down. “Employees are basically saying, ‘This business is not essential. It should not be running. And you should pay us to stay at home,” said Miller.
And yet, another effect of this “front line” mentality, said Miller, is that workers are being treated — by the media, if not their employers — as authorities on the conditions inside their workplaces. Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker in Indiana, has compiled a database of confirmed Covid-19 cases at warehouses that is more complete than any numbers being released publicly by the company. Where mainstream media might previously have mistrusted the claims of protesting workers, that skepticism has been directed instead at employers.
“The bosses say one thing and do another,” said Mario Crippen, an Amazon worker who helped organize a walkout at his warehouse in Romulus, Michigan. “They tell the news something and do the opposite. We just don’t believe them anymore.” In response to protests, Amazon has implemented rules to require more sanitary practices and social distancing, but workers continue to be punished for taking “time off task” to wash their hands. For workers, Miller says, “it becomes more clear every week that we are merely grist for their mill.”
Employers, landlords, and government officials have exhibited a range of responses to the crisis, from appeasement or indifference to incompetence and harsh crackdowns. After he helped organize the walkout at JFK-8, Amazon fired Christian Smalls, claiming he had violated a company-imposed quarantine by returning to the warehouse for the protest. Days later, notes from a meeting of Amazon’s senior leadership team were leaked to VICE News, indicating that top executives, including Jeff Bezos, had deliberately sought to smear Smalls to stigmatize the protest.
Doctors and nurses have been threatened with termination, and even fired, for speaking out about insufficient PPE in Washington state, New York, and Illinois. While workers on the front lines of the pandemic are celebrated for their bravery and sacrifice, their employers continue to cut corners and ignore their complaints. As Jordan Flowers put it, “How can we be ‘essential’ and ‘disposable’ at the same time?”
“Some of the most powerful actions we are seeing right now are ‘care actions,’” said Miller, of coworker.org. The first collective action taken by many retail workers was simply to wear masks in defiance of their bosses’ prohibition. “It was visual and defiant — and defiant in a way that’s an act of care,” said Miller. The politics of the moment, Miller believes, demand an embrace of care, mutual obligation, and an appreciation for human frailty. “The narrow, hyper-masculine idea of textbook labor militancy [i.e. mass walkouts] may not be possible nor effective in this moment,” she said.
Protests are taking new and inventive forms: livestreamed rallies, car processions, and cacerolazo (the banging of pots and pans popular among social movements in Latin America). New York City artist, writer, and organizer Molly Crabapple has been producing posters and banners for people to hang outside their windows. “My nightmare is that after this over, thousands of us will have died, all the small businesses will be bankrupt, tenants will be $8,000 in debt, and the city will be a shell,” Crabapple said. “And then all these Jared Kushner-type development bastards will come in, kick us out, and make this city into Dubai. I can’t bear that. So part of what I’m trying to do visually is show that the city still belongs to us.”
The first collective action taken by many retail workers was simply to wear masks in defiance of their bosses’ prohibition. “It was visual and defiant,” said Miller.
Activists with Never Again Action, a Jewish-led immigrants rights group, have held “car rallies” and “honk-a-thons” outside immigration detention facilities in Philadelphia; Hartford, Connecticut; Hackensack, New Jersey; and Central Falls, Rhode Island; demanding the release of those locked inside.
Still, it’s unclear whether these efforts — effective as they may be — will translate into long-term organizing. It’s unlikely, Engler told me, that the uprising around Covid-19 will be catalyzed within an existing, formal political structure. “Traditional organizations aren’t designed to absorb people in this new moment,” says Engler. Unions have to focus on caring for their members. Existing grassroots organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America will adjust their mission and structure to accommodate new needs and members, but not quickly enough. And more radical groups, like Philly Socialists and their counterparts in autonomous tenant unions and solidarity networks across the country, will struggle to scale up their all-volunteer operations to be a vehicle for mass upheaval.
In such an environment, says Engler, a vacuum is created — between the tremendous needs and anger of an agitated public and the capacities of existing movement organizations. An idea, symbol, demand, or action scenario must emerge that can capture and rapidly absorb the inchoate energy of the moment. Platforms like the People’s Bailout, a list of policy demands with support from dozens of left movement organizations is fine, but it puts the cart before the horse. As Engler tells the organizers he trains, “Momentum can create alignment; but alignment does not create momentum.”
Nonetheless, the seeds of an uprising have been planted in the actions we’re already taking. Engler points to the Gandhian concept of “primary sacrifice,” simple but meaningful acts of mutual service that can be performed by everyone. During the Indian Independence Movement, spinning cotton into cloth was the “primary sacrifice” — a symbolic gesture that united the people in common activity while generating material benefits for the community.
What remains is for something else to emerge, some articulation that captures the moment, like “We Are the 99 Percent or “Black Lives Matter” — a vehicle for mass participation. When it does, greater risks will be required. Through small acts of solidarity, we’re showing each other that we’ll be willing to take them.
Correction: April 15, 2020
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Instacart is owned by Amazon.


theintercept--2020-04-14--Conservative Dark-Money Group One Nation Adds Former Pfizer Lobbyist to Board While Running GOP Sena

Conservative Dark-Money Group One Nation Adds Former Pfizer Lobbyist to Board While Running GOP Senate Ads for Lower Drug Prices

Cole lobbied on behalf of Pfizer as senior vice president of government relations from 2010 to February 2018 , on issues including drug pricing and drug shortages .
Pfizer has placed the blame for high drug prices on health care providers and insurers , while it has fought recent legislative efforts aimed at reducing drug prices .
Since at least 2014 , Cole has also served on the board for the Chamber of Commerce , which has similarly opposed legislative efforts to cut drug costs or allow the government to fine companies for inflating prices .
Ken W. Cole , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for companies like General Motors and Honeywell , as well as the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer , joined the board of One Nation last year .
The group listed Cole as a director on its latest annual report , filed to the Virginia State Corporation Commission in March , but he ’ s not yet listed publicly on its website .
The group is part of the network of conservative fundraisers — under the “ Crossroads ” umbrella — launched by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie after the Supreme Court ’ s 2010 decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crossroads GPS , the 501 ( c ) ( 4 ) wing of Rove and Gillespie ’ s Super PAC , American Crossroads , started One Nation in 2015 after a yearslong fight with the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status .
Crossroads eventually received that status in 2016 .
Although the group has been relatively dormant since 2014 , it maintains fundraising efforts and ended 2019 with $ 35.5 million cash on hand .
One Nation , one of the dark-money groups spending the most to back Republican candidates for Senate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chamber of Commerce board member to its board of directors at the end of 2019 .
One Nation has spent $ 1.7 million already this year on ads praising the efforts of Republican senators , including the push for lower drug prices , a cause both Pfizer and the Chamber have lobbied against .
Pfizer and the Chamber of Commerce have collectively spent just under $ 1 billion on lobbying over the last decade , with Pfizer typically spending around $ 10 million each year , and the Chamber spending more than $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that included efforts to kill legislation aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drug prices , including a bipartisan prescription drug-pricing bill put forward last September by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden .
President Donald Trump has praised the bill and earlier this year called on Congress to pass legislation to address rising drug costs .
The Senate bill , which Grassley has accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of sabotaging , remains deadlocked , while a companion bill in the House , which Pfizer and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year .
The Chamber , meanwhile , supported a separate drug-pricing bill from Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo , saying that it “ would help reduce drug prices without resorting to destructive price controls , ” citing “ inflation cap penalties ” in the Grassley-Wyden bill and “ government negotiation provisions ” in the House bill .
Cole is currently the CEO and managing director of Cactus Consulting LLC , a firm registered in January 2019 in the District of Columbia , with principal offices based in Florida .
One Nation defended its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his work for Pfizer was not a conflict since he left the company early last year .
“ Ken has been a respected leader in a variety of different companies and industries .
After he retired , we sought him out for his breadth of management experience and judgment , ” One Nation President Steven Law said in a statement to The Intercept .
“ Our boards provide guidance on macro issues like financial controls , budgets , compensation and management policies .
They do not direct day-to-day activities.
” Law , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Senate Leadership Fund , and One Nation , is also a former chief of staff to McConnell and a former legal officer for the Chamber of Commerce .
, One Nation is not required to disclose its donors , but voluntary disclosures from a number of interest groups shed light on its funds .
The dark-money group received major contributions of $ 1 million in 2016 and 2017 from Andeavor , an oil company bought in 2018 by an Ohio petroleum conglomerate .
In 2018 , One Nation also received $ 50,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another $ 50,000 from the Real Estate Roundtable in 2017 .
One Nation is the single largest group contributing to the Senate Leadership Fund , the McConnell-aligned Super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates .
It ’ s the political action committee ’ s second-largest donor overall this cycle , after Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman .
It has also contributed to conservative groups working on policy issues like abortion and gun rights , like the National Rifle Association and the Susan B. Anthony List , an anti-abortion group .
The group has spent more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backing Maine Sen. Susan Collins , including ads in January , February , and March highlighting “ Collins ’ effort to lower the price of insulin.
” Democrats note that Collins — like almost every other Republican — voted repeatedly against the Affordable Care Act and closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap .
Collins has taken $ 431,604 from the pharmaceutical industry throughout her career .
Collins , whose chances of securing a fifth term became less certain after her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and increased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is facing a challenge from Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon , backed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee , and Betsy Sweet , backed by Justice Democrats .
In the wake of Collins ’ s vote to confirm Kavanaugh , activist Ady Barkan helped raise more than $ 4 million to support whoever wins the state ’ s Democratic primary in July .
In addition to Collins , One Nation is backing Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and started running ads supporting her last year .
On March 18 , One Nation announced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and digital ads praising Ernst as a champion for lower drug prices .
Ernst said she supported , but did not sponsor , the Wyden-Grassley bill that Pfizer and the Chamber lobbied against , but voted against a 2017 bill that would have allowed the U.S. to import cheaper drugs from Canada .
Ernst in 2018 co-sponsored a Republican-led bill as part of a party effort to assuage fears among its base after its successful repeal of parts of the Affordable Care Act .
Republicans said the bill would protect people with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have allowed insurers to discriminate against patients for other reasons , or sell policies that don ’ t cover other medical problems , HuffPost reported .
Critics say it ’ s unsettling , if not unsurprising , that a McConnell-aligned dark-money group would add a former pharmaceutical lobbyist to its board while running ads celebrating Republican senators for pushing lower drug prices , a cause McConnell himself has stymied in Congress .
“ One Nation ’ s mission is to make sure that Republicans hold their majority in the Senate .
They are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” said Robert Maguire , research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington .
“ It does not mean that One Nation has staked out that policy .
They think that voters in Maine want to hear that .
”

One Nation, one of the dark-money groups spending the most to back Republican candidates for Senate, added a former Pfizer lobbyist and U.S. Chamber of Commerce board member to its board of directors at the end of 2019. One Nation has spent $1.7 million already this year on ads praising the efforts of Republican senators, including the push for lower drug prices, a cause both Pfizer and the Chamber have lobbied against.
The group is part of the network of conservative fundraisers — under the “Crossroads” umbrella — launched by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie after the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. Former staffers for Crossroads GPS, the 501(c)(4) wing of Rove and Gillespie’s Super PAC, American Crossroads, started One Nation in 2015 after a yearslong fight with the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status. Crossroads eventually received that status in 2016. Although the group has been relatively dormant since 2014, it maintains fundraising efforts and ended 2019 with $35.5 million cash on hand.
Ken W. Cole, who has long worked in government relations for companies like General Motors and Honeywell, as well as the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, joined the board of One Nation last year. The group listed Cole as a director on its latest annual report, filed to the Virginia State Corporation Commission in March, but he’s not yet listed publicly on its website.
Cole lobbied on behalf of Pfizer as senior vice president of government relations from 2010 to February 2018, on issues including drug pricing and drug shortages. Pfizer has placed the blame for high drug prices on health care providers and insurers, while it has fought recent legislative efforts aimed at reducing drug prices. Since at least 2014, Cole has also served on the board for the Chamber of Commerce, which has similarly opposed legislative efforts to cut drug costs or allow the government to fine companies for inflating prices.
Pfizer and the Chamber of Commerce have collectively spent just under $1 billion on lobbying over the last decade, with Pfizer typically spending around $10 million each year, and the Chamber spending more than $60 million. In recent years, that included efforts to kill legislation aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drug prices, including a bipartisan prescription drug-pricing bill put forward last September by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. President Donald Trump has praised the bill and earlier this year called on Congress to pass legislation to address rising drug costs. The Senate bill, which Grassley has accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of sabotaging, remains deadlocked, while a companion bill in the House, which Pfizer and the Chamber also lobbied against, passed last year. The Chamber, meanwhile, supported a separate drug-pricing bill from Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo, saying that it “would help reduce drug prices without resorting to destructive price controls,” citing “inflation cap penalties” in the Grassley-Wyden bill and “government negotiation provisions” in the House bill.
Cole is currently the CEO and managing director of Cactus Consulting LLC, a firm registered in January 2019 in the District of Columbia, with principal offices based in Florida.
One Nation defended its board appointment of Cole, claiming that his work for Pfizer was not a conflict since he left the company early last year. “Ken has been a respected leader in a variety of different companies and industries. After he retired, we sought him out for his breadth of management experience and judgment,” One Nation President Steven Law said in a statement to The Intercept. “Our boards provide guidance on macro issues like financial controls, budgets, compensation and management policies. They do not direct day-to-day activities.”
Law, the CEO of Crossroads GPS, American Crossroads, Senate Leadership Fund, and One Nation, is also a former chief of staff to McConnell and a former legal officer for the Chamber of Commerce.
As a 501(c)(4) group , One Nation is not required to disclose its donors, but voluntary disclosures from a number of interest groups shed light on its funds. The dark-money group received major contributions of $1 million in 2016 and 2017 from Andeavor, an oil company bought in 2018 by an Ohio petroleum conglomerate. In 2018, One Nation also received $50,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, and another $50,000 from the Real Estate Roundtable in 2017.
One Nation is the single largest group contributing to the Senate Leadership Fund, the McConnell-aligned Super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates. It’s the political action committee’s second-largest donor overall this cycle, after Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman. It has also contributed to conservative groups working on policy issues like abortion and gun rights, like the National Rifle Association and the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. The group has spent more than $1 million already this year backing Maine Sen. Susan Collins, including ads in January, February, and March highlighting “Collins’ effort to lower the price of insulin.” Democrats note that Collins — like almost every other Republican — voted repeatedly against the Affordable Care Act and closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap. Collins has taken $431,604 from the pharmaceutical industry throughout her career.
Collins, whose chances of securing a fifth term became less certain after her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and increased criticism over her stance on abortion rights, is facing a challenge from Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, backed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Betsy Sweet, backed by Justice Democrats. In the wake of Collins’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh, activist Ady Barkan helped raise more than $4 million to support whoever wins the state’s Democratic primary in July.
In addition to Collins, One Nation is backing Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and started running ads supporting her last year. On March 18, One Nation announced another $970,000 in television, radio, and digital ads praising Ernst as a champion for lower drug prices. Ernst said she supported, but did not sponsor, the Wyden-Grassley bill that Pfizer and the Chamber lobbied against, but voted against a 2017 bill that would have allowed the U.S. to import cheaper drugs from Canada.
Ernst in 2018 co-sponsored a Republican-led bill as part of a party effort to assuage fears among its base after its successful repeal of parts of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans said the bill would protect people with preexisting conditions, but it would still have allowed insurers to discriminate against patients for other reasons, or sell policies that don’t cover other medical problems, HuffPost reported.
Critics say it’s unsettling, if not unsurprising, that a McConnell-aligned dark-money group would add a former pharmaceutical lobbyist to its board while running ads celebrating Republican senators for pushing lower drug prices, a cause McConnell himself has stymied in Congress.
“One Nation’s mission is to make sure that Republicans hold their majority in the Senate. They are going to craft their message around that,” said Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It does not mean that One Nation has staked out that policy. They think that voters in Maine want to hear that.”


theintercept--2020-04-14--The Coronavirus Is Empowering Islamophobes — but Exposing the Idiocy of Islamophobia

is the world ’ s oldest hatred , perhaps Islamophobia is the world ’ s weirdest .
is the world ’ s oldest hatred , perhaps Islamophobia is the world ’ s weirdest .
How else to explain the fact that a pandemic of global and historic proportions , a novel coronavirus that is infecting people in almost every country and territory on Earth , has been weaponized by the far right to attack … Islam and Muslims ?
Take India , where the spread of the virus has been dubbed a “ corona jihad ” by supporters of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic is a conspiracy by Muslims to infect and poison Hindus .
The government itself has blamed around a third of India ’ s confirmed Covid-19 cases on a gathering held in Delhi by a conservative Muslim missionary group called the Tablighi Jamaat ; one BJP minister called it a “ Talibani crime.
” As The Guardian reports , “ Muslims have now seen their businesses across India boycotted , volunteers distributing rations called ‘ coronavirus terrorists ’ , and others accused of spitting in food and infecting water supplies with the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entering certain neighbourhoods in states as far apart as Delhi , Karnataka , Telangana and Madhya Pradesh.
” There have even been reports of Indian Muslims being attacked , beaten , and lynched .
Did members of the Tablighi Jamaat behave recklessly ?
Yes .
Do all of India ’ s 200 million Muslims bear responsibility for their behavior ?
No .
“ Virtually overnight , ” wrote investigative journalist Rana Ayyub in the Washington Post , “ Muslims became the sole culprits responsible for the spread of the coronavirus in India.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nationalist politicians or mobs .
The country ’ s respectable press have joined in too .
The left-leaning newspaper The Hindu published a cartoon showing the world being held hostage by the coronavirus — with the virus itself depicted wearing clothing associated with Muslims .
( The paper later apologized for its “ completely unintentional ” decision to link the crisis to Muslim terrorists , and replaced it with a more neutral image . )
The 24-hour news channel India Today ran an undercover investigation into so-called madrasa hot spots where the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ posted a graphic on the number of Tablighi Jamaat-linked cases over an image of a Muslim prayer cap .
“ This is not journalism , this is hatemongering , ” responded left-wing activist Kavita Krishnan , in a viral video .
“ History will remember you , history will judge you.
” She ’ s right .
Over in my home country , the U.K. , counterterrorism police have been “ investigating far-right groups accused of trying to use the coronavirus crisis to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment , ” according to a recent report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been assisted by prominent far-right personalities , such as former radio shock jock Katie Hopkins , who suggested that U.K. police should physically assault any Muslims found praying in public , and English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson , who shared a video allegedly showing British Muslims attending prayers at a “ secret mosque ” — a video later debunked and dismissed by local law enforcement officials .
Tell Mama , an organization that monitors anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.K. , has documented numerous examples of British Muslims being harassed in recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in south London who said she was approached by a man who “ got in her face ” to cough at her and claimed he had the coronavirus , while also hurling racial abuse at her .
Again , as in India , it isn ’ t only far-right figures using the pandemic to fan the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry but also mainstream media outlets .
In a tweet on March 23 , The Economist promoted a story on the Maldives by declaring that “ the arrival of covid-19 was expected .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a surprise.
” The magazine has since taken down the tweet — but not the story itself .
Meanwhile , high-profile journalists in the U.K. and France have tried to use the forthcoming month of Ramadan to fearmonger about Muslims in the West breaking social distancing guidelines and spreading the virus .
There is zero evidence , however , that Muslims in the U.K. or France are in favor of relaxing the guidelines or planning on reopening mosques in defiance of them .
( And for the record , it was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who told CNN she would be defying social distancing guidelines and attempting to attend a religious gathering because she was protected by holy blood ! )
Here in the United States , too , the far right is mobilizing and trying to exploit the coronavirus to spread hate and violence .
In March , the FBI fatally injured Timothy Wilson , an anti-government extremist , who was planning to bomb a Kansas hospital “ that was providing critical care during the current coronavirus pandemic.
” He had previously planned to attack , among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He was no “ lone wolf.
” Homeland Security officials in New Jersey say neo-Nazi groups have been encouraging their supporters “ to incite panic while people are practicing social isolation during the Covid-19 outbreak , which includes discharging firearms in cities and putting bullet-sized holes into car windows.
” As in the U.K. and India , such groups can take aid and comfort from well-known conservative media figures .
“ You think Covid-19 is bad ?
” wrote author and radio host Neal Boortz to his 200,000-plus followers on Twitter .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Muslims hit critical mass in America .
You ’ ll look back on these times fondly.
” Los Angeles Times reporter Johana Bhuiyan , however , had a perfect response to the boorish Boortz : Here is the great irony : While anti-Muslim bigots have tried to use the coronavirus to smear and demonize Muslims , the pandemic itself has exposed the ridiculousness of anti-Muslim bigotry .
The French and Austrian governments passed bans on face masks , in 2011 and 2017 respectively , as a way of targeting , and criminalizing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the niqab .
Today , France ’ s National Academy of Medicine is calling for masks to be made obligatory for anyone leaving their homes during the lockdown , while the Austrian government has made wearing face masks compulsory for anyone entering a supermarket or grocery store .
In 2018 , the Danish government insisted on making new citizens shake hands at their naturalization ceremonies — a move which , as the New York Times noted at the time , was “ aimed at Muslims who refuse on religious grounds to touch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you might assume the Danes had dropped that mandatory handshake now , right ?
Wrong .
According to the Times , “ the government in Denmark has asked mayors to suspend naturalization ceremonies … with no exception to the handshake for those who want to become citizens.
” We may defeat the Covid-19 virus in the months ahead , but it will take much longer to defeat the disease that is Islamophobia .

Photo: Amarjeet Kumar Singh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
If anti-Semitism
is the world’s oldest hatred, perhaps Islamophobia is the world’s weirdest.
How else to explain the fact that a pandemic of global and historic proportions, a novel coronavirus that is infecting people in almost every country and territory on Earth, has been weaponized by the far right to attack … Islam and Muslims?
Take India, where the spread of the virus has been dubbed a “corona jihad” by supporters of the far-right BJP government; they claim the pandemic is a conspiracy by Muslims to infect and poison Hindus. The government itself has blamed around a third of India’s confirmed Covid-19 cases on a gathering held in Delhi by a conservative Muslim missionary group called the Tablighi Jamaat; one BJP minister called it a “Talibani crime.” As The Guardian reports, “Muslims have now seen their businesses across India boycotted, volunteers distributing rations called ‘coronavirus terrorists’, and others accused of spitting in food and infecting water supplies with the virus. Posters have appeared barring Muslims from entering certain neighbourhoods in states as far apart as Delhi, Karnataka, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh.” There have even been reports of Indian Muslims being attacked, beaten, and lynched.
Did members of the Tablighi Jamaat behave recklessly? Yes. Do all of India’s 200 million Muslims bear responsibility for their behavior? No. “Virtually overnight,” wrote investigative journalist Rana Ayyub in the Washington Post, “Muslims became the sole culprits responsible for the spread of the coronavirus in India.”
But it isn’t just Hindu nationalist politicians or mobs. The country’s respectable press have joined in too. The left-leaning newspaper The Hindu published a cartoon showing the world being held hostage by the coronavirus — with the virus itself depicted wearing clothing associated with Muslims. (The paper later apologized for its “completely unintentional” decision to link the crisis to Muslim terrorists, and replaced it with a more neutral image.)
"The Hindu" news paper displays a cartoon of Corona virus with Muslim attire. What does this indicate. Are not these blood thirsty mainstreams done with Muslim hatredness?
Condemn #Islamophobia pic.twitter.com/pci9ELTMlV — ?Ladeeda Farzana (@ladeedafarzana) March 26, 2020
The 24-hour news channel India Today ran an undercover investigation into so-called madrasa hot spots where the virus is allegedly being spread, and also posted a graphic on the number of Tablighi Jamaat-linked cases over an image of a Muslim prayer cap. “This is not journalism, this is hatemongering,” responded left-wing activist Kavita Krishnan, in a viral video. “History will remember you, history will judge you.”
She’s right. Over in my home country, the U.K., counterterrorism police have been “investigating far-right groups accused of trying to use the coronavirus crisis to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment,” according to a recent report in The Guardian.
These groups have been assisted by prominent far-right personalities, such as former radio shock jock Katie Hopkins, who suggested that U.K. police should physically assault any Muslims found praying in public, and English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, who shared a video allegedly showing British Muslims attending prayers at a “secret mosque” — a video later debunked and dismissed by local law enforcement officials.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Tell Mama, an organization that monitors anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.K., has documented numerous examples of British Muslims being harassed in recent weeks, including a hijab-wearing Muslim woman in south London who said she was approached by a man who “got in her face” to cough at her and claimed he had the coronavirus, while also hurling racial abuse at her.
Again, as in India, it isn’t only far-right figures using the pandemic to fan the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry but also mainstream media outlets. In a tweet on March 23, The Economist promoted a story on the Maldives by declaring that “the arrival of covid-19 was expected. The spread of radical Islam has been more of a surprise.”
Continue to look for ways that some media outlets instrumentalize #COVID?19 to heighten #Islamophobia. Thanks to @Rowaida_Abdel for grabbing this screenshot before @TheEconomist took down the story and the tweet. pic.twitter.com/ysVqZz84H1 — Todd Green (@toddhgreen) March 23, 2020
The magazine has since taken down the tweet — but not the story itself.
Meanwhile, high-profile journalists in the U.K. and France have tried to use the forthcoming month of Ramadan to fearmonger about Muslims in the West breaking social distancing guidelines and spreading the virus. There is zero evidence, however, that Muslims in the U.K. or France are in favor of relaxing the guidelines or planning on reopening mosques in defiance of them. (And for the record, it was a Christian, not a Muslim, woman who told CNN she would be defying social distancing guidelines and attempting to attend a religious gathering because she was protected by holy blood!)
Here in the United States, too, the far right is mobilizing and trying to exploit the coronavirus to spread hate and violence. In March, the FBI fatally injured Timothy Wilson, an anti-government extremist, who was planning to bomb a Kansas hospital “that was providing critical care during the current coronavirus pandemic.” He had previously planned to attack, among other targets, “Islamic centers.”
He was no “lone wolf.” Homeland Security officials in New Jersey say neo-Nazi groups have been encouraging their supporters “to incite panic while people are practicing social isolation during the Covid-19 outbreak, which includes discharging firearms in cities and putting bullet-sized holes into car windows.”
As in the U.K. and India, such groups can take aid and comfort from well-known conservative media figures. “You think Covid-19 is bad?” wrote author and radio host Neal Boortz to his 200,000-plus followers on Twitter. “Give me a break. Wait until Muslims hit critical mass in America. You’ll look back on these times fondly.”
Los Angeles Times reporter Johana Bhuiyan, however, had a perfect response to the boorish Boortz:
Sweetie everyone’s already washing their hands five+ times a day, covering their face, not shaking hands + avoiding bars. Not only are we already here, you’re all Muslim. Salam brother. https://t.co/m6MDbyRrWs — Johana Bhuiyan (@JMBooyah) April 2, 2020
Here is the great irony: While anti-Muslim bigots have tried to use the coronavirus to smear and demonize Muslims, the pandemic itself has exposed the ridiculousness of anti-Muslim bigotry.
The French and Austrian governments passed bans on face masks, in 2011 and 2017 respectively, as a way of targeting, and criminalizing, the wearing of the Muslim face veil, the niqab. Today, France’s National Academy of Medicine is calling for masks to be made obligatory for anyone leaving their homes during the lockdown, while the Austrian government has made wearing face masks compulsory for anyone entering a supermarket or grocery store.
In 2018, the Danish government insisted on making new citizens shake hands at their naturalization ceremonies — a move which, as the New York Times noted at the time, was “aimed at Muslims who refuse on religious grounds to touch members of the opposite sex.”
So you might assume the Danes had dropped that mandatory handshake now, right? Wrong. According to the Times, “the government in Denmark has asked mayors to suspend naturalization ceremonies … with no exception to the handshake for those who want to become citizens.”
We may defeat the Covid-19 virus in the months ahead, but it will take much longer to defeat the disease that is Islamophobia.


theintercept--2020-04-14--Trump PR Stunt Falls Flat, as White House Video Exposes His Failure to Prepare for Pandemic

The video , which was riddled with errors and deceptively edited , was apparently intended to rebut a damning report on the front page of Sunday ’ s New York Times that detailed how slow Trump had been to take the threat posed by the virus seriously .
While Trump was obviously pleased by the production — he pointed to the screen with a look of smug triumph at several points — he seemed unaware as it was unspooling in the White House briefing room that it contained a fatal flaw that helped reinforce the central argument of The Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ selected by the White House social media director , Dan Scavino , attempted to create an alternative history of the first months of the crisis , according to which the American media initially “ minimized the risk , ” but the president “ took decisive action ” nonetheless , only to be unfairly maligned by his political opponents , before the nation ’ s governors came together to sing his praises .
The centerpiece of the video was a timeline of actions by Trump and his administration , highlighting the partial ban on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 31 , and his declaration of a national emergency on March 13 .
But , as CBS News correspondent Paula Reid pointed out to Trump after the video ended , there was a huge gap in the timeline : It mentioned absolutely no action by him in February and there was , as the Times had noted , a period of “ six long weeks ” after the travel restrictions until he “ finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing.
” In fact , the only entry on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month Trump held mass campaign rallies and described criticism of his handling of the virus from Democrats as “ their new hoax ” — was February 6 : “ CDC Ships First Testing Kits.
” The fact that those test kits were defective , a massive failure at a critical moment , seems like an odd thing to brag about .
Well into March , Trump was downplaying the new coronavirus as no more threatening than the flu .
As Trump interrupted to denounce her as “ so disgraceful , ” the correspondent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Americans were supposed to take away from his gauzy video tribute to himself ?
“ Right now nearly 20 million people are unemployed .
Tens of thousands of Americans are dead .
How is this sizzle reel or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis ?
” Trump had no response but to shift back to praising himself for restricting travel from China in January .
“ But what did you do with the time that you bought ?
” Reid asked .
“ The month of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ After the briefing , Eric Lipton , one of the authors of the investigation that so enraged Trump , observed on Twitter that nothing in the video or the president ’ s comments “ undermines even a single fact in the stories we published over the weekend.
” “ The truth remains that the nation ’ s top health advisers concluded as of Feb. 14 that the U.S. needed to use targeted containment efforts to slow the virus spread , ” Lipton added .
“ Trump then waited until March 16 to announce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inadvertently revealing timeline was not the only flaw with the propaganda video produced by Scavino , Trump ’ s former caddie .
It began with a sequence lifted directly from the March 26 edition of Sean Hannity ’ s Fox News show : a series of clips of medical experts for ABC , NBC , and CBS wrongly predicting in late January and early February that Americans would not be badly hit by the virus .
Those clips seemed to be included as an effort to embarrass reporters from those networks , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time echoed almost exactly the public messaging of Trump ’ s hand-picked CDC director , Dr. Robert Redfield , who said at a coronavirus task force briefing on January 31 : “ I want to emphasize that this is a serious health situation in China , but I want to emphasize that the risk to the American public currently is low.
” That opening montage also includes a misleadingly edited clip of Hannity asking Dr. Anthony Fauci , director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and presidential adviser , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to China if the coronavirus outbreak there was worse than expected .
In March , Hannity tried to claim that this was proof that he had “ warned ” of a pandemic .
In fact , before that clip was edited , it showed that Hannity had just been asking Fauci about sending American experts to China to “ help them out to try to contain this ” there .
Like Trump , Hannity had spent all of February comparing Covid-19 to the seasonal flu , and by the end of March , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bizarre aspect of that sequence is that it ends with Dr. David Agus , a CBS News medical correspondent , stating on Feb. 8 that “ coronavirus is not going to cause a major issue in the United States.
” Agus is now a major proponent of the experimental use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 and has reportedly spoken directly with Trump about the possible benefits of the treatment that the president has become fixated on .
In choosing to feature that soundbite from Agus , Hannity ’ s producers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chose not to mention an earlier CBS report which had clearly raised the possibility that the coronavirus could be a serious threat to Americans .
That report , broadcast on Jan. 28 , featured an interview with Fauci by the network ’ s chief medical correspondent , Dr. Jon LaPook .
“ You don ’ t want to frighten the American public , but you need to prepare for , and assume , that this is going to be a real serious problem , ” CBS viewers heard Fauci tell LaPook that morning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the worst , always , because if you don ’ t , and the worst happens , you ’ re behind the 8-ball.
” The third section of the video — about Trump ’ s supposedly unfair treatment by political opponents — takes audio of Times correspondent Maggie Haberman out of context to distort its meaning .
Haberman was one of six reporters who wrote the article that angered Trump .
In an interview with “ The Daily ” podcast in March , Haberman did call Trump ’ s order to slow travel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against the spread of the virus , ” but the White House edit omitted what she said immediately after that .
“ The problem is , it was one of the last things that he did for several weeks.
” “ He did not do anything after that in terms of alerting the public , or telling people to be safe , or telling people to take precautions , ” Haberman added , according to a transcript of the original interview .
“ And it basically squandered several weeks within the U.S. ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in on-screen text of other statements by Haberman about Trump ’ s partial ban of travel from China .
When she said , “ He was accused of xenophobia , ” an image of Joe Biden appeared , over the date March 12 .
Biden , however , was not referring to Trump ’ s travel ban in a speech he gave on that date ; he was criticizing Trump ’ s nativist reference the day before , when he had shut off travel from most of Europe , to what the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Downplaying it , being overly dismissive or spreading misinformation is only going to hurt us and further advantage the spread of the disease , but neither should we panic or fall back on xenophobia , ” Biden said .
“ Labeling Covid-19 a foreign virus does not displace accountability for the misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump administration.
” The fact that Trump subsequently made a point of calling the new coronavirus “ the Chinese virus , ” inciting hatred of Asians and Asian Americans even in his own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been falsely accused of xenophobia all the more absurd .
Moments later in the video , as Haberman said , “ He was accused of making a racist move , ” an image of Nancy Pelosi appeared , over a citation to The Hill from January 31 .
However , as the report in The Hill makes clear , Pelosi had , in fact , been referring to another travel ban issued by Trump that day — “ adding Myanmar , Eritrea , Kyrgyzstan , Nigeria , Tanzania and Sudan to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago ” — when she denounced him for imposing “ such biased and bigoted restrictions.
” The news conference on Monday , which brought the president ’ s time in the briefing room in the past month to more than 40 hours , was yet another example of Trump hijacking for his own ends what was previously a news conference dedicated to conveying vital information about a public health emergency .
The president , however , seems to regard the free time on television each day as primarily an opportunity for self-promotion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stage when Trump told reporters that , after watching the video , “ Most importantly , we ’ re going to get back on to the reason we ’ re here : which is , the success we ’ re having.
” Updated : Wednesday , April 15 , 4:18 p.m. EDT This article was updated to add a reference to a report from “ CBS This Morning ” on Jan. 28 in which Dr. Anthony Fauci told the network ’ s chief medical correspondent that it was important for the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus to be a serious problem , “ because if you don ’ t , and the worst happens , you ’ re behind the 8-ball .
”

Donald Trump smiled on Monday as he tricked the news networks into broadcasting a taxpayer-funded testimonial to his own leadership, in the form of a video highlight reel of presidential statements on the coronavirus crisis, set to stirring music, unveiled during the president’s 29th daily briefing on the pandemic.
WATCH: Here was the scene in today's #PressBriefing when President Trump aired what @CNN has labeled a propaganda video. pic.twitter.com/ZMaYDL6YVu — Austin Kellerman (@AustinKellerman) April 13, 2020
The video, which was riddled with errors and deceptively edited, was apparently intended to rebut a damning report on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times that detailed how slow Trump had been to take the threat posed by the virus seriously. While Trump was obviously pleased by the production — he pointed to the screen with a look of smug triumph at several points — he seemed unaware as it was unspooling in the White House briefing room that it contained a fatal flaw that helped reinforce the central argument of The Times report.
Inside coronavirus briefing President Trump is having reporters watch campaign style montage praising his handling of coronavirus. #Covid_19 pic.twitter.com/Idq26FKYqQ — Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCNN) April 13, 2020
The compilation of clips, selected by the White House social media director, Dan Scavino, attempted to create an alternative history of the first months of the crisis, according to which the American media initially “minimized the risk,” but the president “took decisive action” nonetheless, only to be unfairly maligned by his political opponents, before the nation’s governors came together to sing his praises.
The centerpiece of the video was a timeline of actions by Trump and his administration, highlighting the partial ban on travel from China he ordered on January 31, and his declaration of a national emergency on March 13.
Photo: White House
But, as CBS News correspondent Paula Reid pointed out to Trump after the video ended, there was a huge gap in the timeline: It mentioned absolutely no action by him in February and there was, as the Times had noted, a period of “six long weeks” after the travel restrictions until he “finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing.”
In fact, the only entry on the video timeline for February — the month Trump held mass campaign rallies and described criticism of his handling of the virus from Democrats as “their new hoax” — was February 6: “CDC Ships First Testing Kits.” The fact that those test kits were defective, a massive failure at a critical moment, seems like an odd thing to brag about.
Well into March, Trump was downplaying the new coronavirus as no more threatening than the flu.
So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020
Having seemed so pleased with himself while the video was playing, Trump looked stunned by Reid’s observation that its timeline showed the period of inaction the Times had described. “The argument is that you bought yourself some time,” by imposing the partial travel ban from China, Reid noted. “You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing.”
.@PaulaReidCBS presses Pres. Trump about his administration's early actions on the coronavirus, after he spent the beginning of his press conference complaining about his media coverage https://t.co/ySmFq3sUis pic.twitter.com/iKuTfTqg4I — CBS News (@CBSNews) April 13, 2020
As Trump interrupted to denounce her as “so disgraceful,” the correspondent pressed on to ask what, exactly, Americans were supposed to take away from his gauzy video tribute to himself? “Right now nearly 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How is this sizzle reel or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis?”
Trump had no response but to shift back to praising himself for restricting travel from China in January. “But what did you do with the time that you bought?” Reid asked. “The month of February… the video has a gap.”
After the briefing, Eric Lipton, one of the authors of the investigation that so enraged Trump, observed on Twitter that nothing in the video or the president’s comments “undermines even a single fact in the stories we published over the weekend.”
“The truth remains that the nation’s top health advisers concluded as of Feb. 14 that the U.S. needed to use targeted containment efforts to slow the virus spread,” Lipton added. “Trump then waited until March 16 to announce his support for these measures.”
The inadvertently revealing timeline was not the only flaw with the propaganda video produced by Scavino, Trump’s former caddie.
It began with a sequence lifted directly from the March 26 edition of Sean Hannity’s Fox News show: a series of clips of medical experts for ABC, NBC, and CBS wrongly predicting in late January and early February that Americans would not be badly hit by the virus. Those clips seemed to be included as an effort to embarrass reporters from those networks, but the statements of those TV doctors at the time echoed almost exactly the public messaging of Trump’s hand-picked CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, who said at a coronavirus task force briefing on January 31: “I want to emphasize that this is a serious health situation in China, but I want to emphasize that the risk to the American public currently is low.”
That opening montage also includes a misleadingly edited clip of Hannity asking Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and presidential adviser, in January if American experts might go to China if the coronavirus outbreak there was worse than expected. In March, Hannity tried to claim that this was proof that he had “warned” of a pandemic. In fact, before that clip was edited, it showed that Hannity had just been asking Fauci about sending American experts to China to “help them out to try to contain this” there. Like Trump, Hannity had spent all of February comparing Covid-19 to the seasonal flu, and by the end of March, he too was backpedalling furiously.
Another bizarre aspect of that sequence is that it ends with Dr. David Agus, a CBS News medical correspondent, stating on Feb. 8 that “coronavirus is not going to cause a major issue in the United States.” Agus is now a major proponent of the experimental use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 and has reportedly spoken directly with Trump about the possible benefits of the treatment that the president has become fixated on.
In choosing to feature that soundbite from Agus, Hannity’s producers, and the White House, also chose not to mention an earlier CBS report which had clearly raised the possibility that the coronavirus could be a serious threat to Americans. That report, broadcast on Jan. 28, featured an interview with Fauci by the network’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Jon LaPook. “You don’t want to frighten the American public, but you need to prepare for, and assume, that this is going to be a real serious problem,” CBS viewers heard Fauci tell LaPook that morning. “We have to prepare for the worst, always, because if you don’t, and the worst happens, you’re behind the 8-ball.”
The @CDCgov has issued its strongest travel warning, urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China.@CBSNews Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jon Lapook (@DrLaPook) joins us to discuss the ongoing research of the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/Tl0GEjnrSA — CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) January 28, 2020
The third section of the video — about Trump’s supposedly unfair treatment by political opponents — takes audio of Times correspondent Maggie Haberman out of context to distort its meaning. Haberman was one of six reporters who wrote the article that angered Trump. In an interview with “The Daily” podcast in March, Haberman did call Trump’s order to slow travel from China “a pretty aggressive measure against the spread of the virus,” but the White House edit omitted what she said immediately after that. “The problem is, it was one of the last things that he did for several weeks.”
Here’s the full exchange with ?@mikiebarb?, in which I compared the president’s behavior around the a China travel limitations to the Bush “Mission Accomplished” moment. pic.twitter.com/nq8t43JnuT — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 13, 2020
“He did not do anything after that in terms of alerting the public, or telling people to be safe, or telling people to take precautions,” Haberman added, according to a transcript of the original interview. “And it basically squandered several weeks within the U.S.”
That same sequence included two false annotations in on-screen text of other statements by Haberman about Trump’s partial ban of travel from China. When she said, “He was accused of xenophobia,” an image of Joe Biden appeared, over the date March 12. Biden, however, was not referring to Trump’s travel ban in a speech he gave on that date; he was criticizing Trump’s nativist reference the day before, when he had shut off travel from most of Europe, to what the president called the “foreign virus.”
“Downplaying it, being overly dismissive or spreading misinformation is only going to hurt us and further advantage the spread of the disease, but neither should we panic or fall back on xenophobia,” Biden said. “Labeling Covid-19 a foreign virus does not displace accountability for the misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump administration.”
The fact that Trump subsequently made a point of calling the new coronavirus “the Chinese virus,” inciting hatred of Asians and Asian Americans even in his own White House, makes his claim to have been falsely accused of xenophobia all the more absurd.
Moments later in the video, as Haberman said, “He was accused of making a racist move,” an image of Nancy Pelosi appeared, over a citation to The Hill from January 31. However, as the report in The Hill makes clear, Pelosi had, in fact, been referring to another travel ban issued by Trump that day — “adding Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Tanzania and Sudan to the travel ban that the President instituted three years ago” — when she denounced him for imposing “such biased and bigoted restrictions.”
The news conference on Monday, which brought the president’s time in the briefing room in the past month to more than 40 hours, was yet another example of Trump hijacking for his own ends what was previously a news conference dedicated to conveying vital information about a public health emergency. The president, however, seems to regard the free time on television each day as primarily an opportunity for self-promotion.
That was made clear at one stage when Trump told reporters that, after watching the video, “Most importantly, we’re going to get back on to the reason we’re here: which is, the success we’re having.”
Updated: Wednesday, April 15, 4:18 p.m. EDT
This article was updated to add a reference to a report from “CBS This Morning” on Jan. 28 in which Dr. Anthony Fauci told the network’s chief medical correspondent that it was important for the United States to prepare at that time for the coronavirus to be a serious problem, “because if you don’t, and the worst happens, you’re behind the 8-ball.”