Trump

Trump Sure Wants to Keep What Happens at Walter Reed Under Wraps

By Shelton Muro 2 weeks ago

One imagines that Donald Trump carries a stack of nondisclosure agreements around with him like business cards, ready to hand one out whenever needed. Trump Organization employees, campaign and White House staff, women with whom he’s been intimate — he’s tried to silence them all with NDAs. With some notable exceptions, this has generally worked out for him in the past. So given the way NDAs have helped him obscure his shady business practices, corrupt politicking, and sordid personal life, perhaps it makes sense that he’d try to use confidentiality agreements to conceal another sensitive matter: his health.

NBC News on Thursday reported that Trump demanded that the doctors who cared for him during his mysterious Walter Reed visit last November sign NDAs before treating him — an unusual requirement that underscores the president’s caginess about his unannounced 2019 hospital visit and his health more broadly. Sources familiar with the

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Spicer: Trump campaign ‘will move forward’ while president in hospital

By Shelton Muro 2 weeks ago

This is a rush transcript from “The Story with Martha MacCallum” October 2, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone. I’m Martha MacCallum. And tonight, this is “The Story” in America.

That was what we all watched together just moments ago, a site that you don’t see very often, the President of the United States, leaving the White House and heading to the hospital. He’ll check in there for a few days. The president boarded Marine One bound for Walter Reed Medical Center, one of the finest medical facilities in the world. The White House says that this action is out of an abundance of caution.

The first lady did not accompany him. She is also COVID positive and is said to have a mild cough and a headache. We, obviously, send all of our

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Trump, stricken by COVID-19, flown to military hospital

By Shelton Muro 3 weeks ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stricken by COVID-19, a feverish and fatigued President Donald Trump was flown to a military hospital Friday night after being injected with an experimental drug combination in treatment at the White House.



President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he leaves the White House to go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after he tested positive for COVID-19, Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

© Provided by Associated Press
President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he leaves the White House to go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after he tested positive for COVID-19, Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In a day of whipsaw events, the president who has spent months downplaying the threat of the virus was forced to cancel all campaign events a month before the election as he fought a virus that has killed more than 205,000 Americans and is hitting others in his orbit as well.

The White House said Trump’s expected stay of “a few days” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was precautionary and that he

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Democrats nominate Biden for epic challenge to oust Trump

By Shelton Muro 2 months ago

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Democrats formally nominated Joe Biden as their presidential candidate, with party elders, a new generation of politicians and voters in every state joining in an extraordinary, pandemic-cramped virtual convention to send him into the general election campaign to oust President Donald Trump.

For someone who has spent more than three decades eyeing the presidency, the moment Tuesday night was the realization of a long-sought goal. But it occurred in a way that the 77-year-old Biden couldn’t have imagined just months ago as the coronavirus pandemic prompted profound change across the country and in his presidential campaign.

Instead of a Milwaukee convention hall as initially planned, the roll call of convention delegates played out in a combination of live and recorded video feeds from American landmarks packed with meaning: Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, the headwaters of the Mississippi River, a Puerto Rican community still recovering from a

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TikTok and its employees prepare to fight Trump over app ban

By Shelton Muro 2 months ago

TikTok and its U.S. employees are planning to take President Donald Trump’s administration to court over his sweeping order to ban the popular video app, according to a lawyer preparing one of the lawsuits.

The employees’ legal challenge to Trump’s executive order will be separate from a pending lawsuit from the company that owns the app, though both will argue that the order is unconstitutional, said Mike Godwin, an internet policy lawyer representing the employees.

Trump last week ordered sweeping but vague bans on dealings with the Chinese owners of TikTok and messaging app WeChat, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy. The TikTok order would take effect in September, but it remains unclear what it will mean for the apps’ 100 million U.S. users, many of them teenagers or young adults who use it to post and watch short-form videos.

It’s also

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As a grim fall approaches, Trump team feels increasingly confident

By Shelton Muro 2 months ago

A pandemic summer marked by testing delays, supply shortages and continued spread of the coronavirus has set the stage for a disheartening start to the fall across much of the U.S., with the shuttering of schools and cancellation of college football seasons that officials had once hoped would herald a return to normalcy more than six months into the crisis.

But inside the White House, Trump’s top political aides are increasingly assured about their response — feeling like they’re finally getting a handle on how to fight the disease.

As the crippling crisis turns toward a third season, an alternate reality is taking shape inside the White House even in the face of spiking case counts, long lags in test processing and a Covid-19 death toll that regularly tops 1,000 Americans a day. Trump aides are growing confident about what they see as measurable progress: new therapeutic measures, delivery of

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How Trump and Biden are trying to run virtual campaigns during coronavirus

By Shelton Muro 3 months ago

President Donald Trump’s campaign has ridiculed rival Democrat Joe Biden for remaining cloistered during the pandemic, forced to give speeches, meet activists and raise money almost entirely from the seclusion of his basement in Wilmington, Delaware.

But as precautions and concerns about COVID-19 have grown, Trump has also halted his signature rallies at least temporarily and started his own virtual gatherings to keep in touch with voters.

“They’re making things up on the fly and seeing what works,” said Bob Oldendick, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina. “You use everything that’s available to you.”

Spikes in COVID-19 cases and social distance measures used to slow the spreading virus have forced the Trump and Biden teams to adjust their campaigns in ways never seen in history. Rallies, handshakes and traditional grassroots organizing are out. They’ve been replaced with a barrage of email, texts, candidate videos, Zoom meetings

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US on brink of 5 million confirmed cases; Trump executive order may have exceeded authority

By Shelton Muro 3 months ago

The U.S. was on the brink of another historic milestone Sunday, poised to surpass 5 million reported cases of COVID-19 — a number roughly equal to one-quarter of total worldwide cases reported.

The numbers continue to roar higher: More than 56,000 new U.S. cases were reported Sunday, with more than 1,000 deaths. More than 162,000 Americans have died in little more than six months.

The Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus dashboard also reported record-breaking numbers in Brazil, the second hardest-hit nation in terms of deaths and cases. Brazil has now exceeded 100,000 deaths and 3 million cases. 

All this as the world neared 20 million cases, a number experts widely believe is underreported due to insufficient testing. 

The staggering numbers come as world leaders grapple with the ongoing human and economic toll of the virus. President Donald Trump has previously attributed high number of cases in the U.S. to expanded testing,

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Voters much more likely to trust family, Fauci than Trump on vaccine

By Shelton Muro 3 months ago

Only 14 percent of voters said they would be more likely to take a coronavirus vaccine if President Donald Trump recommended it, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

Voters were far more likely to say they’d take a vaccine based on the advice of their family (46 percent), the CDC (43 percent) or the government’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci (43 percent). One-third said they would be more likely to get vaccinated if the World Health Organization encouraged Americans to do so.

“Kitchen table conversations will be critical in the effort to get Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 when one becomes available. Nearly half of voters would be more likely to get vaccinated against the virus if their family encouraged them to do so,” said Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult.

More voters said they’d get vaccinated on the advice of presumptive Democratic presidential candidate

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Trump suggests delaying election; Miami schools defy Gov. DeSantis, go online-only; FDA sets at-home test rules

By Shelton Muro 3 months ago

President Trump suggested delaying the November election Thursday, saying reliance on mail-in voting due to the pandemic would be “inaccurate and fraudulent.”

The Commerce Department issued a record-breaking report of the U.S. economy, announcing that the gross domestic product contracted at a staggering seasonally adjusted annual rate of 32.9% in the April-June period. A surge in virus infections and deaths that has slowed business reopenings in many states could signal more bad news ahead.

In Florida, reeling from rising daily death reports, the state’s largest school district announced that it will begin the school year virtually on Aug. 31. This despite a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis to have school districts provide an in-classroom options.

And in Washington, D.C., Democratic leaders and Trump administration officials said they were far apart on a $1 trillion stimulus package. Without it, there won’t be another round of $1,200 stimulus checks or another cash

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