Jane’s on the factchecks!
^ this is a good thread.
FFS.
‘It’s a hoax. There’s no pandemic’: Trump’s base stays loyal as president fights Covid
News that the president has contracted coronavirus prompted alarm and confusion among Trump supporters in Missouri
Sean Patterson is not worried that Donald Trump has been hospitalized with coronavirus because he believes what the president tells him.
“It’s a hoax. There’s no pandemic. As Trump said, how many millions die of flu?” said the 56-year-old truck driver outside the early voting station in St Joseph, Missouri – a stronghold for the president.
But then Patterson pauses and contemplates the possibility that Trump really does have Covid-19.
“If he’s sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It’s what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold,” he said. “It’s political. I don’t trust the US government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety? I listen to Trump.”
At the end of a tumultuous week even by the standards of one of the most turbulent presidencies of modern times, the disturbing if not entirely unpredictable news that the president has contracted coronavirus prompted alarm, confusion and schadenfreude in the heart of Trumpland.
St Joseph, a former frontier city where the outlaw Jesse James met his bloody end, voted overwhelmingly for the president four years ago. The polls say Missouri will go his way again next month. But with Trump struggling in key swing states, the news he has fallen sick to Covid-19 jolted an election already battered days earlier by the most undignified presidential election debate in history.
Trump’s persistent interruptions and disruptions, including mocking Biden for wearing a mask in other situations, tested the faith of more than a few of his supporters. Now his contraction of coronavirus has raised further doubts after Trump repeatedly undermined medical advice as the Covid-19 death toll surged past 200,000.
His family openly defied regulations requiring masks at the debate. The president attended an election rally in Wisconsin the next day and failed to wear a mask. Several of his officials, including adviser Hope Hicks and former top aide Kellyanne Conway, have also tested positive.
Even some Trump supporters despaired at his cavalier attitude to the pandemic and his ability to turn a medical emergency into a political fight and loyalty test.
“I agreed with the president that it was wrong to shut down the country because of coronavirus,” said Karen White, an office manager who voted for him in 2016. “The damage to our economy was just too great. But he was wrong to question masks. I wish he hadn’t done it. He made things worse and now I have to wonder if he would even have it if he had just listened to what his own advisers were saying.”Others were more sanguine. “It doesn’t worry me that he’s infected because I’m not surprised,” said Martin Rucker, a 63-year-old African American public servant on his way to vote early at the county courthouse in central St Joseph. “He didn’t take precautions to stop getting it and now he has it. It was predictable.”
Some of the more conspiratorially minded were, like Patterson, suspicious of whether the president actually has coronavirus but for different reasons.
“When I first heard, I did wonder if he made it up to get out of the next debate or win sympathy,” said Amy Grant, a 26 year-old shopworker. “Before it would have been impossible to think a president would make up getting ill but now anything seems possible. He probably didn’t but I’m not completely sure.”
Some Democrats were fearful at the prospect of Trump dying or being forced out of the race because they view the president as Biden’s best hope of election. Without Trump, a more measured and reasoned Republican candidate might prove a stronger challenge to Biden, a lacklustre campaigner who would probably not be so far ahead in the polls if not for the pandemic.
Other critics of the president privately wished Trump ill, saying he has a lot of blood on his hands for playing politics with the pandemic and encouraging Republican governors, with the power to impose social distancing and mask orders, to do the same even as the virus ravaged the midwest.
Trump set the tone for Missouri’s governor, Mike Parson, who consistently resisted making masks obligatory in public spaces on the grounds that the government shouldn’t tell people what to do. Parson refused to wear one in shops because he said “there was a lot of information on both sides” about whether they are effective.
Parson tested positive for coronavirus last month and has been in quarantine.
Coronavirus may well cost Trump the election as his support wobbled over the past few months, but some of those who have stuck with him this far are not ready to abandon him now he is sick.
“I will vote for him again,” said White. “I still think he’s better for the country. If Biden becomes president he will be under the control of the socialists.”
Patterson too will remain loyal even though, while he defends Trump on coronavirus, he was horrified by Tuesday’s debate.
“It’s a crying shame what we’ve reduced ourselves to. Gone are the days when two men could have a civilised debate about their policies,” he said.
The Democratic candidate’s campaign said it will suspend attack adverts against Trump after he was taken to the Walter Reed Medical Center.
Jan, a bookkeeper who declined to give her last name, would like to think that Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and what she called his childish behaviour at the debate, will cost him power.
“Trump thinks he’s better than everyone else. It was a matter of time before he got coronavirus because he doesn’t believe in masks and he doesn’t understand the function of masks,” she said. “But I think he could win again. There’s a lot of stupid people in this country. Maybe they want a despot to rule them.”
Rucker, the public servant, said Trump’s behaviour at the debate will have shocked a lot of Americans, but he doubts it will have any real impact on the election.
“It was very unprofessional but again I’m not surprised,” he said.Rucker is not worried though. He thinks Trump’s handling of coronavirus, if it doesn’t cost him his life, will lose him the election and that even if he then refuses to accept defeat and tries to stir up violence, it won’t go anywhere.
“I don’t think he’ll win again. He’s so divisive. I believe in the US to endure,” he said.
From the debate, when Trump was yelling about ballots dumped in ditches. Not true, shocker.
Cross posting! (I thought for a sec this was the same as what Pet posted in Milwaukee lol. Nope! Just more fuckery in a different state.)
Cross-posting about Trump’s crazy claims of influenza lethality:
I’d like to hear all of it fact checked please.
Eric Trump has a case of his father’s ‘projection.’ and is accusing someone of living above their means. Apple does not fall too far from the tree.
Jane and Craig doin’ their thing!
Here is the misinformation that Dr. Scott Atlas presents to the nation. Yes why isn’t he showing the 1K deaths per day.
MSNBC follows Ric Grennell (former DNI) and asks him to present information on where these invalid ballots are.
video Soberoff to Ric Grenell
Seriously?
Somebody did a not-very-deep fake of a Pornhub banner “appearing” during a live CNN broadcast.
Cross posting this awesome resource!
One of the phrases we often hear crowed by those on the right is “what about black-on-black crime?”
But the numbers show that rates of white-on-white and black-on-black crime are actually quite similar, and this is just another lie to justify their racism.
Fact check: Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black crime are similar
The claim: There are significant race-based disparities in civilian homicide rates, but not in police homicide rates.
A viral meme purports to list homicide statistics by race in the United States, as follows:
- Whites killing Blacks — 2%
- Police killing whites — 3%
- Whites killing whites — 16%
- Blacks killing whites — 81%
- Police killing Blacks — 1%
- Blacks killing Blacks — 97%
The page behind one viral version of the post, I Support Law Enforcement Officers, had over 611 shares on its post. USA TODAY has reached out to the page for comment.
Some versions of the meme include this line: “America does have a problem. But it’s not what the media tells you it is.”
Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide are similar, at around 80% and 90%
Overall, most homicides in the United States are intraracial, and the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black killings are similar, both long term and in individual years.
Between 1980-2008, the U.S. Department of Justice found that 84% of white victims were killed by white offenders and 93% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.
In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that 81% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 89% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.
In 2017, the FBI reported almost identical figures — 80% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 88% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.
Though the numbers differ year-to-year, the stark difference that the viral post attempts to portray between the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide — which it puts at 16% and 97%, respectively — is inaccurate.
Both numbers tend to hover between 80% and 90% and remain within 10 percentage points of each other.
Rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide also within 8 points
Likewise, the post attempts to portray a gulf in the rate of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide — which it lists at 81% and 2%, respectively.
Statistics from the FBI in 2018 and 2017 contradict that claim.
In 2018, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 8% of Black victims were killed by white offenders.
Similarly, in 2017, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 9% of Black victims were killed by white offenders.
In both years, the numbers remained within eight percentage points, a much smaller gap than the 79% alleged in the viral post.
Police kill Black people at disproportionate rates
Though nationwide statistics are less readily available, multiple studies have found that police kill Black people at disproportionate rates.
A study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in 2016 examined all 812 fatalities that resulted from use of lethal force by on-duty law enforcement from 2009-2012 in 17 states. The study used National Violent Death Reporting System data.
The majority of victims were white people, at 52%, but “black victims were over-represented (32.4%) relative to the U.S. population.” The fatality rate was 2.8 times higher among Black victims than white victims.
Most victims were reported to be armed, at 83%, but black victims were more likely to be unarmed, at 14.8%, than white victims, at 9.4%, the study found.
Similarly, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 found that Black men and women are killed by police at higher rates than their white counterparts.
Specifically, Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the course of their lifetime than white men, while Black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than white women.
Both studies reveal that the claim from the viral post that police kill white people at 3% and Black people at 1% is false.
Our rating: False
Based on our research, all six purported homicide statistics in the viral post are FALSE. The significant race-based disparities are also false. In reality, rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicides are similar and remain within 10 percentage points of each other, around 80% and 90%, respectively. Likewise, rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide remain within eight percentage points of each other, at around 16% and 8%. And police kill Black people at disproportionate and much higher rates than they kill their white counterparts.
Our fact-check sources:
- U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011, Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008
- Federal Bureau of Investigations, Uniform Crime Reporting, Crime in the United States 2018, Expanded Homicide Data Table 6
- National Library of Medicine, American Journal of Preventative Medicine, November 2016, Deaths Due to Use of Lethal Force by Law Enforcement
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2019, Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex