President Biden: “[Trump] lied about the pandemic he botched, killing millions of people. He closed businesses. He closed schools”

News Article

www.dukechronicle.com/article/2024/06/duke-university-joe-biden-rally-raleigh-post-debate-presidential-campaign-donald-trump-first-lady-jill-biden-reassure-concerned-democrats-roy-cooper-josh-stein

Presidents Joe Biden held a campaign rally in Raleigh less than 24 hours after participating in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle against his Republican challenger, former president Donald Trump. During the rally, Biden criticized Trump's handling of the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic

“He lied about the pandemic he botched, killing millions of people. He closed businesses. He closed schools,” Biden said Friday. “America was flat on its back.”

This is not the first time President Biden or the Biden Administration has blamed Republicans for school closures and taken credit for reopening schools.

This also comes on the heels of a Governor Newsom sound bite this week where he blamed the Trump Administration’s “guidance” for California closing beaches, shutting outdoor dining, and arresting beach goers.

“All this happened with members of the Trump administration providing counsel and providing recommendations to states like mine. Very much part of that Trump record as well.” - Governor Newsom

What do you think of these statements by both President Biden and Governor Newsom? Is this an effective strategy to shift total blame away from their party and on to the Trump administration for individual decisions Governors and local leaders did, even after President Trump was out of office? Should they continue to blame Trump for the consequences of 2020-21 pandemic lockdowns/mandates and hope no one fact-checks them or should they just try and shift topics when second order effects of lockdowns are brought up?

in moderatepoliticsby GatorWills

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StarWolf478

286

That is a blatant lie. Trump left it up to the states for them to decide what they would close and most of the states that had the heaviest lockdowns were the states ran by Democrats.

200-inch-cock

only 7 states didnt lock down at all. guess what color.

Apprehensive-Act-315

A lot of people, including myself, thought Biden would come in, declare the war on COVID done due to vaccines, and reopen the schools.

It was shocking when he doubled down on COVID and put in place vaccine mandates.

200-inch-cock

in nova scotia in 2021, an ostensibly center-right government was voted in. they then instituted a mask mandate, and a vaccine mandate for children as young as 12. people voted for them because they didnt like what the liberal government was doing with covid, but the PCs carried right on and doubled down.

CCWaterBug

Personally I didn't see what Biden did regarding vax that negatively.

What I saw was CA, NY, NJ going totally off the deep end regarding shut downs, vax mandates, schools. I'm sure there were others ,but those 3 jump out as super duper obvious.

Employers were bad too, and the chickens are coming home to roost, United airlines for example are about to get financially slammed over their actions, and I approve of the lawsuit myself.

Lastly. The Media... so, so, so bad... they might have lost their credibility with me for my lifetime.

DontCallMeMillenial

Personally I didn't see what Biden did regarding vax that negatively.

There were definitely some things done at the federal level that were overreaches.

Trying to mandate vaccines by making it an OSHA violation to be unvaccinated, requiring masking on flights well after vaccines were commonly available, turning on the money printer for stimulus to private businesses and never verifying it was used for actual pandemic relief or paid back, etc...

CCWaterBug

Ya, the airline thing was a bit ridiculous, especially since we had 2 snacks midflight, it was comical

GatorWills

21h

One of the weirder ones was the border closures, that was extended by the Biden Administration all the way into late 2021 for many countries including EU-Schengen, the UK, and Brazil. Even Canada's land border was closed for a period entirely too long.

Florida's DeSantis even pushed the Biden Administration to reopen the borders to tourism since so much annual revenue came from these countries in particular.

Atralis

My state was fairly middle of the road in terms of restrictions and I remember our governor (Democrat) catching a ton of flack from the left and in particular the teachers unions for pushing for schools to open or stay open early in the pandemic.

https://www.cpr.org/2020/07/14/polis-on-reopening-colorado-schools-we-cant-sacrifice-our-childrens-future-just-because-of-the-pandemic/

The key is to keep schools “as safe as reasonably possible, given the fact that we’re in a pandemic,” Polis said. And in the meantime, he said “I believe that we can’t interrupt education, we can’t sacrifice our future and our children’s future just because of the pandemic.”

Reddit makes it easy to look back in time to how that argument, which I'm sure the vast majority of us today across the political spectrum can see now was pragmatic and valid, was received.

reddit.com/r/CoronavirusColorado/comments/hr4ua7/polis_on_reopening_schools_we_cant_sacrifice_our/

Just some examples-

"Reading this interview, Polis is so out of touch. "

"As a teacher, he can go \*** himself."*

"The teachers and staff are cannon fodder I guess."

In a lot of progressive states the governors caved to the teacher's unions and kept kids at home for lengths of time that did serious and possibly permanent damage to them because of the degree to which it limited their development.

khrijunk

-22

Not really a lie. They are blaming the Trump administration for the guidance on shutting things down. Trump's pandemic response team did have guidance about lockdowns, and Trump went against his own medical advisors to say stuff should open again.

DontCallMeMillenial

Not really a lie. They are blaming the Trump administration for the guidance on shutting things down.

Shutting things down in the immediate near term to allow policy makers to figure out what to do before a potentially extreme situation gets out of hand is VERY different than keeping things shutdown/restricted for years after the disease has been endemic.

I would never blame anyone for shutting things down in the spring of 2020.

SIEGE312

I’ll sure blame some of them for keeping things shut down for literal years though.

DontCallMeMillenial

Exactly.

At some point caution becomes ignorance.

Every once in a while I still see someone driving alone in a car with a cloth mask on their face... I just don't get it.

HeimrArnadalr

English Supremacist

Fear is the mind-killer.

Theron3206

Honestly, as often as not that will be because they aren't going far and have either forgotten they're wearing it or just can't be bothered fiddling with it.

There are still people who have a good reason to wear a mask in public, and if they want to that's fine.

khrijunk

-1

The advice on how to stop the spread from the Trump administration was lockdowns and wearing masks. Trump went against those guidelines pretty early so there was no way to control the virus, and it was still killing people at an alarming rate.

The states that kept the lockdowns going were still following the advice of the Trump team still trying to fight the spread. It was just a losing battle because conservatives stopped caring.

voltran1987

I recommend you send me $1000.

Now you have to CHOOSE whether or not you’re going to follow my guidance.

politehornyposter

-57

ACLU Liberal

Did Trump's handling of the pandemic contribute to policy makers and businesses implement shutdowns as a result? That's an entirely different claim that's more difficult to answer.

timmg

Did Trump's handling of the pandemic contribute to policy makers and businesses implement shutdowns as a result?

I don't think so. Honestly.

No one knew how fast the pandemic would spread, how it was spread, how deadly it would be, etc. All that stuff took time to figure out. Some states/people chose a very cautionary approach (which is what Biden, ironically, ic complaining about here). Others were more laissez faire.

It turns out that population density was a big determinant in how quickly things spread. So it actually made sense to have different policies in different places.

But as it was, the Dem-controlled places tended to be more lockdown-oriented and the Repub-controlled places were quicker to open.

politehornyposter

-4

ACLU Liberal

Surely, some places were forced to lock down harder due to strains on their health systems. I hesitate to say how much responsibility Trump actually blames for this, but I imagine that's where the argument goes.

timmg

Surely. Maybe you have some sense for whether it was 90% of the cause or 5%?

My recollection was that there were a few hot spots here and there. But it was a lot closer to the extreme low end than the extreme high end. But feel free to show some data.

Wampaeater

No it didn’t

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CCWaterBug

"forcefuk shutdowns"

I kinda like that! Leave it in.

Apprehensive_Fix1201

It's one of my sub conscious typos.

I have a gift

politehornyposter

-17

ACLU Liberal

There were hospitals in my area that were at near full capacity from covid. Didn't happen that often, but still. IDK, who do you think should be taking responsibility for that? I don't even know if it's just Trump's blame to bare, but whose it is supposed to be then?

Apprehensive_Fix1201

Did you ever consider the fact that worldwide disasters like viral pandemics, throw society's into chaos and NOT EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM CAN BE BLAMED ON SOMEONE

a once I'm a century worldwide disaster and we sit around and assign blame to everyone we can because.....?

Our society has issues with this. We are so privileged and first world crybabies that how dare the president let a virus come into the country?

politehornyposter

ACLU Liberal

Was there nothing to improve on, or that we could have done better to reduce the extent of the overall damage of the pandemic? I don't buy that. You can blame it on society, our culture, politics, but hell we absolutely must have been able to done better somehow?? You could even argue that wasn't even Trump's fault, though I don't think he exactly tried to make people feel safe.

Apprehensive_Fix1201

Dude, do you not keep up with the breakthroughs in treating it. They made tons of progress and we learned what worked and what didn't.

Im sorry it took longer than we wanted but jt turns out novel virus takes time to understand.

While you look everything bad and need to blame everyone we made tremendous progress

politehornyposter

-1

ACLU Liberal

Our health systems are a joke, and the pandemic strained the shit out of it. You're making a lot of excuses for political leadership. Can you pin this all on Trump? No. But this is a national issue that states can't be expected to tackle alone.

CoyotesSideEyes

Yes there was. If we'd done absolutely nothing, there would have been less damage. The collateral damage caused by covid policies was greater than the virus itself

politehornyposter

ACLU Liberal

The second part may be true, but I highly doubt the first. I didn't have much faith in the political apparatus to meaningfully improve our healthcare in the first place, though

CoyotesSideEyes

You underestimate the harm caused to children. By school closures, demonization of others, mask mandates, lockdowns, etc.

GatorWills

20h

Don't forget: Skyrocketing rates in:

Obesity, due to forced sedentary policies
Cancer diagnosis due to missed cancer diagnosis
Homicides
Suicides / suicide attempts
Mental health illnesses
Drug overdoses
Food insecurity
TB in developing countries
Routine childhood vaccine distrust

It's almost like forcing everyone to become sedentary and destroying people's mental and physical health for a virus that disproportionally kills the unhealthy was a bad move. Maybe next time we have a pandemic we won't arrest people exercising.

eddie_the_zombie

-8

I suppose we could always consult expert opinion on the matter.

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eddie_the_zombie

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the Trump White House, said in the CNN documentary “COVID War: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out” that the U.S. could have dramatically reduced its death toll if the administration had acted earlier and more decisively.

“I look at it this way: The first time, we have an excuse,” Birx told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”

ouiaboux

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the Trump White House, said in the CNN documentary “COVID War: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out” that the U.S. could have dramatically reduced its death toll if the administration had acted earlier and more decisively.

Funny, I remember Trump shutting down air traffic from China and the Dem response was to call him racist and take pictures of them all in Chinatown eating dinner. Then a month later they were blaming him from not doing enough.

eddie_the_zombie

-1

Dude, he shut down traffic from only China, after there were confirmed cases in other countries, so that's a pretty useless gesture unless you're just trying to make it look like you're doing something. Then he fought with his public health experts for months, leading to total mismanagement of the crisis when his shutdown lead to predictable failure.

Apprehensive_Fix1201

Oh yeah? GUPTA well why don't you step right up and show us the way

Gupta is CNN doctor consultant and his job is to talk about public health.

I admire a man who knows how to save that many lives but liked talking more about them dyjnf under trump .I'm awfully sick that game man.

eddie_the_zombie

Dr. Birx tried to show Trump the way, but according to her, he didn't listen. That's on him.

Apprehensive-Act-315

Even that is local policy. For example Oregon has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the nation due to cost controls. The state has to approve each one and rarely does.

politehornyposter

ACLU Liberal

Health systems don't seem to be in that great of shape in many states. Why is it so nationally common?

ouiaboux

Over half of all states require a certificate of need before you can build new healthcare facilities.

politehornyposter

ACLU Liberal

Not good. My state doesn't have CON according to this, and we still saw some hospitals at capacity.

I have to wonder, though, these laws were presumably designed to give hospital networks monopolies to increase efficiency and reduce redundancy so they could be more profitable and reduce strains on their network. I know in the 70s they started to have a lot more of the neoliberal market thinking going on, but at that some point you have to wonder why you just don't try to go for public management at that point.

CoyotesSideEyes

The guy who lied about illegal gain of function research, Tony Fauci

Brendinooo

Enlightened Centrist

Hospitals don’t keep a ton of empty ICU beds sitting around, right? Doesn’t this have more to do with the capitalist incentives in our health care system?

ouiaboux

That has nothing to do with capitalism or not. Health care is an expensive resource which you don't want to waste. Having half empty hospitals is a huge and expensive waste of resources.

Brendinooo

Enlightened Centrist

My point was that less efficient systems in other countries might have had more capacity and therefore better rates during Covid.

PornoPaul

Yes.

One of the things I learned was that many hospitals are always nearly full. If a hospital has 90% of their beds empty, it's considered a failing hospital and winds up closed.

You could also get banned from many subs for making any comparisons to the flu, during the early days of covid. However, there were articles every 3-5 years about hospitals reaching capacity due to especially harsh flu seasons. So covid wasn't the first time and wasn't even the 4th time in the 2000's alone that many of these same hospitals ran out of beds, at least ICU beds.

However, thanks to Trumps lackluster and chaotic handling of the pandemic, it was easy to point the finger at him. And while leaving it to the states makes a certain level of sense, I think many people agree he could have handled it better on a federal level. The hospitals at least were not one of those things.

Hogs_of_war232

China is who should be taking responsibility for that.

CoyotesSideEyes

Or the guy funding the illegal gain of function research in Wuhan.

politehornyposter

-4

ACLU Liberal

China would be responsible for managing infections on American soil?

Apprehensive_Fix1201

Did you not assume he was speaking ofbthe outbreak itself instead of China managing our public health?

Which one seemed more plausible to you?

Come on man

politehornyposter

-1

ACLU Liberal

I'm assuming that countries and the individuals that comprise them take responsibility for managing the public health within their borders.

Hogs_of_war232

Sometimes in a disaster there's really no one to blame. Shit goes bad and everyone does the best they can. I joke saying China but in reality in history there are going to be periods where bad things happen and people die and there's really only so much anyone can reasonably do to prevent it.

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Slicelker

-4

Trump left it up to the states

That's where Trump messed up. There should have been one federal covid response, instead of 50 arbitrary responses in a country with free movement between state borders. Covid doesn't care if you're in California or Nevada.

Conservatives frame this as a good thing, but all it does is showcase Trump's inability to lead in a crisis.

HeimrArnadalr

English Supremacist

I don't think the president has the authority to override state governors like that.

Slicelker

-1

Doing zero and overriding state governors are on two opposite ends of the spectrum. The proper thing to do would have been somewhere in the middle.

andthedevilissix

The Fed doesn't and shouldn't have control over states like that.

Ed_Durr

Maximum Malarkey

The biggest power grab opportunity that the president has had since WWII, and you’re mad that Trump didn’t take unilateral control of the nation?