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His problem was his inconsistency and then Medlock became available.

Trump Spends Easter Asking Confidants: ‘What Do You Think of Fauci?’ WORKING THE PHONES The president called various friends and allies over the weekend to ask for their opinion on the doctor he says he made a “star”—and even retweeted a call for his firing. Asawin Suebsaeng White House Reporter Updated Apr. 13, 2020 4:10AM ET / President Donald Trump spent much of this Easter weekend, his first Easter sequestered at the White House in the midst of a global pandemic and crashing economy, in a rather predictable fashion: working the phones and rage-tweeting at The New York Times and Mike Wallace’s son. At one point, the president even promoted a Twitter post calling for the firing of his top infectious-disease expert in the middle of a deadly pandemic—because he’d said something construed as rude to Trump. Over the weekend, the president picked up the phone and began dialing various close advisers and associates to ask them their opinion on how soon he should “open” the U.S. economy and call for Americans to start resuming business as usual, according to three people familiar with the conversations. The subject of when to ease restrictions and guidelines, as the death toll has risen in the tens of thousands and governors and the federal government have struggled to combat the coronavirus, has been a major point of debate within the upper ranks of the Trump administration. While the president has often advocated highly optimistic and at times even negligent positions on the crisis, certain key members of his coronavirus task force—including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—have urged a more cautious, patient approach, particularly on “reopening” the United States for business. And so the doctor appeared to weigh on Trump’s mind this Easter weekend. “What do you think of Fauci?” the president repeatedly worked into his phone conversations over the past few days, the three sources said, as he pulsed his broader network of informal advisers, industry allies, and current staff on their opinions on the news of the day. At one point this weekend, Trump remarked that he’s made Fauci a “star” and that barely anybody would have known who the doctor was were it not for the president putting him front and center in the administration’s coronavirus response, televised press briefings, and media strateg

Former GOP strategist blasts Trump: ‘We’ve never seen a president more visibly failing hour by hour’ Yes, he foisted Sarah Palin on our national politics, which was a little like bringing an uncooked moose to a dinner party instead of a nice insouciant, oaky cabernet. But Steve Schmidt, the veteran Republican campaign strategist who guided John McCain’s 2008 presidential run, now speaks the truth. And he’s not pulling punches when it comes to the ocher abomination. Yesterday, during a panel discussion on MSNBC, Schmidt said what the majority of Republicans still can’t acknowledge. Donald Trump sucks. Hard. So hard, in fact, that he will go down as the worst president in the history of our country. SCHMIDT: “When we look back at history, what we would have seen from Barack Obama back through Harry Truman is an American president calling for an international convention on pandemics, about how we bring the world together, how American leadership can drive toward a solution. Instead, we have the American delegation saying no to a communique because they won’t use the word ‘Wuhan flu.’ So it’s theater of the absurd that tops off every evening at the 6 o’clock follies where the American people are lied to nonstop, where he sows confusion, where he sows division, where he attacks the people who need help the most. We’ve never seen a dereliction of duty, we’ve never seen a level of unfitness for command, we have never seen a president more visibly failing hour by hour to meet the moment, to meet the test of history than we’re seeing with Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States. And I think by the time we get to the end of it, someone who will be universally regarded by historians, along with [James] Buchanan, the 15th president, who prefaced the Civil War, as the worst commander in chief in American history.”

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. In the wake of President Trump’s move to push aside the official who was supposed to lead the coronavirus bailout watchdog group, four other members are just as vulnerable. Trump was able to remove the panel’s chosen head, Glenn Fine, by naming a new Defense Department inspector general and bumping Fine to the No. 2 job at the Pentagon watchdog office. No longer an acting inspector general, Fine was disqualified from serving on the panel he was supposed to lead. Fine’s removal sounded an alarm among Democrats in Congress, who had demanded that spending safeguards be built into the $2 trillion recovery package. House Democrats rushed out a proposed tweak that would stop further removals like Fine’s by opening up eligibility to senior officials in IG offices, not just IGs themselves. “We must not allow President Trump to openly flout the oversight measures that Congress put in place,” Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, along with Reps. Gerald Connolly and Stephen Lynch, said in a statement on Wednesday. “There are literally trillions of taxpayer dollars at stake, and Americans across the political spectrum want those funds to be spent without waste, fraud, abuse, or profiteering.” The four other members of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee who serve in an acting capacity are Mitchell Behm at the Department of Transportation, Sandra Bruce at Education, Richard Delmar at Treasury and Christi Grimm at Health and Human Services. That means they could also be removed by being replaced, just as Fine was.

According to a report from the Daily Beast, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar may soon be exiting the White House for refusing to sugarcoat information about the coronavirus pandemic when speaking with Donald Trump. Azar, who attempted to alert the president about the looming COVID-19 pandemic threat in January, has rarely been invited to the president’s daily coronavirus press briefings which could be a sign that his days are numbered As longtime political observer Eleanor Clift writes, after describing Azar as one possible “hero” in the White House: “Speaking truth to power has its price in the Trump administration. The former Eli Lilly executive was shouted down by White House aides as ‘alarmist’ and sidelined by Jared Kushner, Mike Pence and others willing to give the president a more rosy view. And on Sunday night, Trump lashed out at Azar by name for the first time, following a New York Times report that Azar had ‘directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks.’” According to Clift, “After complaining about ‘mayhem’ at the White House, Azar’s future is uncertain but his attempts to get top officials and President Trump to pay attention to the coming pandemic should not be lost in the fog of war as Trump recasts history in his favor.”

For all those who predicted that Trump would kill the messenger, here it is: President Trump delivered his first public rebuke of the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of his coronavirus task force on Sunday evening by resharing a tweet that said “Time to #FireFauci.” DeAnna Lorraine, a Trump supporter and former congressional candidate for California, tweeted: “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.” Trump retweeted Lorraine and commented of her claims, “Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up.”

You know, it sucks. Here we were poised to steamroll over the rest of the league and challenge for the Cup again, and the whole freaking world shuts down. Not fair, I tell you. Not fair at all.

Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged on Sunday that there was a “lot of pushback” early on by the Trump administration on initiating social-distancing restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus, noting that “no one is going to deny” that lives could’ve been saved if they had acted earlier. Following The New York Times reporting that Fauci and other top officials attempted to get President Donald Trump to implement closures and physical distancing guidelines back in February, only for the president to resist for nearly a month, State of the Union anchor Jake Tapper asked Fauci why the president was hesitant. “You know, Jake, as I’ve said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,” the White House coronavirus task force member replied. “We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

Republican Gov. Disputes Trump Claim About Medical Equipment Availability The president on Friday insisted states are in "great shape" and said governors' calls for help have slowed to a trickle. By Ja'han Jones, HuffPost US Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.) on Sunday contradicted President Donald Trump’s rosy reviews of the federal government’s ability to provide states with the vital medical equipment needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Hogan, chair of the National Governors Association, said on ABC’s “This Week” that governors still have “tremendous needs,” and that it was inaccurate to suggest otherwise. The Trump administration has tried to cobble together a belated response to the pandemic after initially dismissing concerns being raised about the coronavirus as a “hoax” and downplaying its impact. As death and infection numbers have grown and states have shuttered due to stay-at-home orders, Trump and many administration officials have altered their rhetoric to suggest they have been doing all they could to fight it from the beginning. “This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked Hogan about Trump’s claim at a Friday White House briefing that “we’re in great shape with” ventilators and claimed not to have received “any calls” from governors in need of critical medical supplies. Seconds later, Trump said his administration was receiving “very few” calls from governors or “anybody else needing anything.” Hogan disputed that characterization. “Well, I get calls every day” on the need for supplies, he said, adding neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence had participated in some of those conference calls with various governors. “I’d hate to say that everybody’s completely happy and that we have everything we need,” Hogan said, while noting the federal response has improved. Everybody still has tremendous needs on personal protective equipment and ventilators and all of these things that you keep hearing about,” he said. “Everybody’s fighting to find these things all over the nation and all over the world.”

Well, that is one Moss that has been gathered.

The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly attempted behind the scenes to crush a public records lawsuit demanding that the state release the names of all elder-care facilities in which someone has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Miami Herald, the Florida newspaper behind the planned legal action, reported Saturday that DeSantis’ general counsel called Holland & Knight lawyer George Meros, who has represented the state of Florida in the past, and pressured him to abandon the lawsuit after the Herald notified the state of the pending legal action, as required by law. Shortly after that conversation, the Herald‘s attorney, [Sanford] Bohrer, received a phone call from inside Holland & Knight, instructing him to stand down,” the Herald reported. “They asked us not to file this lawsuit on behalf of the Herald,” Bohrer said. “They did not want Holland & Knight to represent the Herald.” Aminda Marqués González, the Herald‘s executive editor and publisher, said in a statement that the suit will still go forward but under a different law firm. The public records lawsuit will seek only the names of elder-care facilities where someone has tested positive for COVID-19, not the names of individual patients, the Herald said.

MOTHER KNOWS BEST!

If California, Arizona and Texas can declare gun shops as essential services, then why not these?

Well now. That's going to put him on Trump's "Enemies List". Trump will be in a surly mood today (more than usual).

U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson was released from the hospital on Sunday morning after thanking the National Health Service in his first public statement after being moved out of intensive care at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. “I can’t thank them enough,” he said on the eve of his release. “I owe them my life.” Johnson, 55, was the first world leader to test positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago, and his symptoms gradually deteriorated to the point of first needing hospitalization and then intensive care. After three days in the I.C.U. ward, he was moved back to regular care. He received oxygen, but was not intubated for a ventilator. It is not clear when he will be released from the hospital. British Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a statement that Johnson needed “time and space to rest, recuperate and recover.” The U.K. recorded 917 new COVID-19-related deaths on Saturday, bringing the death toll there to 9,875.

THE WISDOM OF TRUMP STRIKES AGAIN President Donald Trump’s Labor Department has quietly issued guidance informing most employers in the United States that they will not be required to record and report coronavirus cases among their workers because doing so would supposedly constitute an excessive burden on companies. The new rules, released Friday by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), were met with alarm by public health experts and former Labor Department officials who said the new rules are an absurd attack on transparency that could further endanger frontline workers. Because COVID-19 is officially classified as a recordable illness, employers would typically be required to notify OSHA of coronavirus cases among their workers. The Trump administration’s new regulatory guidelines state that—with some exceptions—employers outside of the healthcare industry, law enforcement and firefighting, and corrections will not be required to report coronavirus cases among their employees because companies “may have difficulty making determinations about whether workers who contracted COVID-19 did so due to exposures at work.”

APRIL 11, 2020 4:05PM (UTC) Encouraged by the pain, suffering, misery and distraction caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump is continuing his assault on American democracy and the rule of law. His most recent move: removing at least seven inspectors general who provide independent oversight within various departments of the United States government. Trump is a malignant narcissist with authoritarian tendencies and may well be a sociopath. Like a Mafia boss, he views personal loyalty as more important than loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law. Aided by Attorney General William Barr, Trump appears poised to loot the coronavirus relief funds passed by Congress, harass and silence his political enemies, speed up the country's downward slide into failed democracy, and unleash more cruelty against those Americans he deems to be insufficiently loyal or otherwise "undesirable." On Twitter, Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, summarized recent developments: Shaub is perhaps being optimistic: Donald Trump and his allies, both foreign and domestic, are already gorging on democracy. Trump makes no effort to hide his contempt for American democracy. He is obvious and unapologetic.

In a conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci last month, President Trump questioned why health officials couldn't simply let the coronavirus pandemic “wash over the country,” according to The Washington Post. In his desire to reopen the country as soon as possible, Trump reportedly wanted to know why the United States could not simply decline to take countermeasures against COVID-19, with an aim of reaching a critical mass of immunity faster. Fauci, reportedly aghast, said, “Mr. president, many people will die.” Public health experts agree that if the coronavirus is not contained, hundreds of thousands will die.

President Trump was told in late January about a memo from his trade adviser warning of the effects of the coronavirus, despite his claim later on that he had never seen the memo, The New York Times reports. Peter Navarro sent a memo on Jan. 29 alerting the president to the possible fallout from COVID-19: millions of deaths and trillions of dollars lost across the world. In April, Trump denied seeing it. But according to records and current and former officials who spoke to the Times, that wasn’t true, as Trump had been informed at the time about the predicted fallout of the pandemic. The denial was one in a long litany of ways Trump and his administration turned a blind eye to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Times. Public health experts have warned that the White House’s slow response and failures to plan for a pandemic will likely result in American deaths.

The weeks-long battle between religious leaders who have defied coronavirus lockdown orders and authorities trying to protect the public from spreading the deadly infection came to a head this weekend as members of churches around the country prepared for an unusual Easter Sunday service. The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 500,000 on Saturday, yet some faith leaders said they planned to go against federal guidelines discouraging public gatherings of more than 10 people, while others in harder-hit areas worked to set up Zoom meetings and experimented with sound-mixing technology to combine separately recorded hymns. Governors in several states worked to balance the desire for adequate public health measures with the politics of asking citizens not to gather to celebrate the holiday. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp have encouraged worshippers to attend online services. Though Holcomb has ordered Indiana churches to stay closed, Kemp has reportedly left the decision up to individual pastors in his state. In Texas and Florida, governors have exempted religious services from the states’ stay-at-home orders. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the Reverend Tony Spell—who was charged last month for repeatedly violating a state ban on large gatherings—said this week that he expects 2,000 people to attend Easter Sunday services at the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge. “Satan and a virus will not stop us,” Spell told Reuters, as he prepared for the Sunday service. “God will shield us from all harm and sickness.” (He previously told WMTV he did not believe his congregation was at risk of infection because he believed the virus was “politically motivated.”) Central Police Chief Roger Corcoran said in a statement in March that Spell had repeatedly failed in his responsibility to show “strength and resilience” during the crisis, choosing instead “to embarrass us for his own self-promotion.” “Mr. Spell will have his day in court where he will be held responsible for his reckless and irresponsible decisions that endangered the health of his congregation and our community,” added Corcoran. “We are facing a public health crisis and expect our community’s leaders to set a positive example and follow the law.”

Reports of COVID Survivors Being Reinfec Denis Balibouse/Reuters The World Health Organization said Saturday that it will be investigating reports from South Korea that the coronavirus has “reactivated” in 91 patients who were thought to have recovered to determine if there were testing errors or other anomalies. The WHO guidelines state that people are considered recovered from COVID-19 when they test negative twice within 24 hours, which usually takes place around two weeks after the onset of symptoms. South Korean health officials said Friday they are carrying out their own epidemiological investigations to determine the cause, which could be down to the patients not having fully recovered or taken extra time to shed the virus. “We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly,” the WHO said in a statement. “We are aware that some patients are PCR positive after they clinically recover, but we need systematic collection of samples from recovered patients to better understand how long they shed live virus.” It is currently thought that COVID-19 creates antibodies that protect anyone who has tested positive from contracting the virus again. Read it at Reuters