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Post by Admin on Jun 11, 2020 19:21:45 GMT
US President Donald Trump says he will "not even consider" renaming military bases named for Confederate generals.
He tweeted that the facilities were part of "a Great American heritage".
Mr Trump's remarks follow reports that top military officials were open to changes amid nationwide soul-searching after the death of George Floyd.
For many, symbols of the Confederacy - the slaveholding southern states that seceded, prompting the 1861-65 American Civil War - evoke a racist past.
Confederate monuments have been a frequent target for protesters following Floyd's death.
On Wednesday night a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was brought down by protesters in Richmond, Virginia.
Meanwhile, demonstrators in the nearby city of Portsmouth attacked a Confederate monument, tearing down four statues, according to local media reports.
Mr Trump tweeted on Wednesday that bases named for Confederate generals "have become part of a Great American heritage, a history of Winning, Victory and Freedom".
He added: "The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.
"Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!"
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Post by Admin on Jul 9, 2020 23:31:17 GMT
A mural with the words "Black Lives Matter" will soon emblazon Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, right in front of one specific landmark: Trump Tower. On Thursday morning, work crews blocked off traffic between 56th and 57th streets. Groups of painters then used rollers to start filling in large yellow letters on the pavement. President Trump derided the mural plan last week, saying it would be "denigrating this luxury Avenue" and antagonize the city's police as "a symbol of hate." New York Mayor Bill de Blasio responded: "Black people BUILT 5th Ave and so much of this nation. Your 'luxury' came from THEIR labor, for which they have never been justly compensated. We are honoring them. The fact that you see it as denigrating your street is the definition of racism." In early June, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser had the words "Black Lives Matter" painted in huge yellow letters on the street that leads to the White House. Local activists soon added the words "Defund The Police." Across New York City, Black Lives Matter murals have been painted on the streets. One in bright yellow in Bedford Stuyvesant. A colorful, eclectic one in Lower Manhattan. In Harlem, a multicolored mural that spans both sides of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.
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Post by Admin on Jul 14, 2020 18:58:51 GMT
It’s almost impressive how dedicated President Trump has been to misleading the public during his time in office. According to a tally from The Washington Post, Trump made his 20,000th misleading claim as president last week.
The newspaper’s Fact Checker has kept track of Trump’s dubious claims since his inauguration—and it seems that he’s lied more and more often as time has gone on. The first 10,000 misleading claims came during his first 827 days as president, which equates to a rough average of 12 claims a day. But he hit his 20,000th claim on July 9, just 440 days later, which means he’s uttered 23 unverifiable claims a day over those 14 months. The newspaper’s tally now stands at 20,055 misleading claims over 1,267 days.
Fittingly, an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News helped Trump shoot over the 20,000 mark. Trump offered 62 misleading claims on July 9, around half of which were said to Hannity.
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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2020 19:28:52 GMT
Amid renewed criticism of his COVID-19 response and new controversy over his decision to sic federal forces on Democratic-led cities, President Trump on Wednesday night resurrected his story about a 2018 cognitive test he insists he got a “perfect mark” on, now claiming he also got “extra points” for a particularly impressive feat.
The feat? Repeating the words “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in the right order.
In recent weeks, the president has repeatedly called on former Vice President Joe Biden to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment while bragging that he left doctors “very surprised” that he scored perfectly on the exam. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, however, pointed out to Trump that the exam isn’t actually hard, as it is meant to test cognitive impairment.
“They have a picture and it says ‘what’s that’ and it’s an elephant,” Wallace said to Trump on Sunday. Trump insisted at the time that other questions were much harder and Wallace “couldn’t answer many of the questions” while claiming he personally “answered all 35 questions correctly.”
During a Wednesday interview with Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel, Trump was again obsessed with how well he did on the MoCA, a 30-point assessment that is administered over 10 minutes.
Saying he took his cognitive test “probably a year ago or less than a year ago,” he went on to recount that he asked former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson if there was some kind of “acuity test” he could take, which occurred in early 2018.
“He said there actually is, and he named it, whatever it might be,” Trump said. “And it was 30 or 35 questions—the first questions are very easy and the last questions are much more difficult. Like a memory question.”
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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2020 19:32:47 GMT
The Trump administration has announced four executive orders to lower drug prices, but health policy experts say they will likely offer patients only minimal relief and may take months to implement, if they're implemented at all.
The orders signed Friday afternoon included allowing certain drugs to be imported from Canada and making changes to the way discounts negotiated by middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers are passed on to Medicare patients.
The most radical order involves requiring Medicare to pay the same price for some drugs — the ones patients receive in the hospital as part of Medicare Part B — that other countries pay. However, Trump said he is giving the pharmaceutical industry until Aug. 24 to make a deal with him before he implements it.
"We may not need to implement the fourth executive order, which is a very tough order," he said.
The administration did not send this executive order to reporters and it was not immediately clear whether the president signed it. Trump said he will be meeting with pharmaceutical executives on Tuesday.
Overall, the ideas embodied in the executive orders aren't new and aren't as meaningful as the White House lets on, says Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant director of Harvard Medical School's Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law.
"Clearly what this speaks of is a bit of desperation as to the president's sinking in the polls and needing to show that he is doing something about a campaign commitment from four years ago on which there hasn't really been much action," he tells NPR.
He says he wonders whether the administration will "slow walk" these executive orders after making a big deal of signing them. They could offer some relief but would likely take many months to implement.
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