Navigating Coronavirus — July 7

In today’s email, we take a look back at the last few days of Trump’s disinformation campaign to mislead the American public on the pandemic crisis — and we examine the breaking news yesterday of who the Trump administration gave PPP money to. Then we dig into his misguided attempt to sacrifice the country’s health for the economy, when in reality he failed at both.

Read on for today’s Navigating Coronavirus…

It’s been 132 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 3 million cases and more than 132,000 deaths.

THE LATEST

Message guidance on the latest developments with President Trump’s handling of the crisis.

1. TRUMP IS HELPING THE RICH GET RICHER, WHILE SCREWING OVER THOSE WHO NEED THE MOST HELP.

As they say expanded unemployment benefits are no longer needed for the 18 million Americans who remain out of work, Trump’s administration had no problem doling out taxpayer dollars to Trump-allied lobbyists, billionaires, and even his own family.

• CAN’T MAKE IT UP >> Billionaire Kanye West and Jared Kushner’s family got PPP loans intended for small businesses.
• WORST OF THE WORST >> On top of Kanye and the Kushners, the Trump administration gave PPP money to Grover Norquist, Devin Nunes’ winery, companies owned by billionaire GOP WV Gov. Jim Justice, and even the Ayn Rand Institute, which advocates against government aid programs. All as they left many legitimate small businesses in the cold.
• DON’T FORGET >> The Trump administration wanted to keep all this secret.
• WAPO: “Data released by the Small Business Administration Monday show that private equity-backed chains and companies owned by members of Congress received money from the Paycheck Protection Program along with almost 90,000 employers that either said they would not retain any jobs or did not say how many they’d retain.”
• “Dozens of tenants of President Trump’s real estate company also received funds, reviving questions about conflicts of interest brought by the president’s continued ownership of his company while in office.”
• AP: “Forty lobbyists with ties to President Donald Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy.”

2. TRUMP IS IGNORING THIS CRISIS, PRETENDING IT’S OVER WHILE HE MISLEADS AMERICANS AND TRIES TO DIVIDE AND DISTRACT US.

Trump’s lies and disinformation campaign have kicked into high gear in recent days, as he has desperately tried to change the subject from the deadly pandemic he’s given up on fighting.

• GET THIS >> The White House’s actual plan for addressing coronavirus is just to hope Americans “grow numb” to the rising death toll and outbreaks

As we hit 3 million coronavirus cases in the U.S., the White House is brazingly trying to claim we’ve been “a leader” in this fight — despite us leading the world in deaths and cases.

Trump’s lies are making things worse and endangering Americans as he downplays this crisis to try to change political dynamics to benefit his campaign.

• NYT: “Trump Falsely Claims ’99 Percent’ of Virus Cases Are ‘Totally Harmless’”
• WAPO: “Trump will accept a ‘steady’ few hundred coronavirus deaths a day as the cost of his reelection”
• NBC: “After several months of mixed messages on the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is settling on a new one: Learn to live with it.”

Trump is defying experts who all agree this crisis is out of control.

• Former FDA Commissioner: “U.S. ‘right back where we were’ at earlier peak of coronavirus outbreak”
• Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute: “It’s very harmful to have a lack of clear communication and to underplay this virus.”
• FOX: “US has 4% of the world’s population, but more than 25% of global coronavirus cases”
• Reuters: “The United States saw a 27% increase in new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended July 5 compared to the previous seven days, with 24 states reporting positivity test rates above the level that the World Health Organization has flagged as concerning.”

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT

The latest on how the economic crisis sparked by coronavirus is being fueled by President Trump’s actions and years of conservative economic policies, focusing today on how Trump’s actions have devastated both the economy and public health.

Trump tried to sacrifice public health for economic growth and ended up creating a catastrophe on both fronts.

• Trump was worried about what the economic turmoil would mean for his reelection, but his focus on helping Wall Street and big business by “reopening the economy” and forcing workers back on the job before it was safe was wildly off base and devastating for the economy.
• Progressives have been saying for months that the idea that we faced a choice between protecting the economy and protecting public health is absolutely false.
• The economy isn’t Wall Street or massive corporations — the economy is people, and if people aren’t healthy and confident that they are safe, the economy cannot and will not recover.
• Trump may be doing a victory lap over Great Depression-level unemployment, but the reality is that the economy is in crisis and will almost certainly get even worse if Congress doesn’t move quickly with additional support.

Trump and his conservative allies have lengthened and deepened this economic crisis, and now they are threatening to cut pay for 30 million Americans at the end of this month.

• Trump and his allies are still pushing to cut off unemployment benefits during a deadly pandemic and threatening to snatch away money being used to pay rent, buy groceries, and stay safe. This would be a moral and economic calamity.
• Unemployed workers will lose a $600 a week lifeline at the end of the month, but McConnell just yesterday said he won’t be moving a bill for “a couple of weeks” and continues to focus on shielding big businesses from liability for endangering their workers and customers.
• READ >> “If the $600 weekly unemployment insurance increase is allowed to expire, how many jobs will it cost over the next year?”

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Navigating Coronavirus is a joint project of Governing for Impact, Groundwork Collaborative, The Hub Project, and Navigator Research.

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