‘As we navigate the unprecedented challenge of responding to the coronavirus, we’re exploring a range of contingency options…’
Joe Biden / IMAGE: MSNBC
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Joe Biden said Tuesday that it is “hard to envision” the Democratic Party holding its national convention, which is scheduled to take place in Milwaukee in July, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The primary and general elections must still take place, Biden told MSNBC, but the process “may have to be different.”
“We ought to be able—we were able to do it in the middle of the Civil War all the way through to World War II—have Democratic and Republican conventions and primaries and elections and still have public safety,” he said. “And we’re able to do both … There’s no rationale for eliminating or delaying the election.”
Just a few weeks ago, Biden shot down the idea of canceling the convention, arguing that it’s important to move forward with the normal “democratic processes.”
“We’d have to change the rules,” Perez said. “We’re not contemplating rule changes.”
The DNC’s current rules and bylaws require the delegates to vote in person.
“I’m very confident that we’re going to be able to carry it off,” Perez told Axiosin a March 12 interview, “and I’m equally confident in the competence of our team.”
Less than a month later, several top Democrats predict the party won’t hold the convention at all.
“I’m not sure we’re going to have a convention,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. “I think both parties are very likely, I hope, to agree on postponing the convention or doing something that won’t bring thousands of people together to kill each other ultimately with COVID-19.”
Another senior Democrat told Fox News that even if the convention moves forward as planned, no one will want to attend it.
“I think the thing’s going to be canceled,” the Democrat said. “And I think a whole lot of people don’t want to go either.”
A spokeswoman for the DNC said the situation is “very fluid,” but as of right now there is not an official plan to cancel the convention.
“As we navigate the unprecedented challenge of responding to the coronavirus, we’re exploring a range of contingency options to ensure we can deliver a successful convention without unnecessary risk to public health,” DNC communications director Katie Peters said in a statement.
“This is a very fluid situation—and the convention is still more than three months away,” she continued. “We are committed to sharing updates with the public in the coming weeks and months as our plans continue to take shape.”
In light of the possible cancellation, Democrats are also trying to convince the Republican Party to convince its August 24-27 convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. President Donald Trump, however, said late last month that there’s “no way” he’d cancel the event.
“We are definitely planning—it’s toward the end of August,” Trump told Fox News.
“Somebody was asking today, ‘Will you cancel your convention?’ I said no way I’m going to cancel the convention,” he added. “We’re going to have the convention, it’s going to be incredible.”
‘Unburdened by a restrictive central regulatory body … private companies moved quickly to mass produce those tests, meaning they could be rolled out rapidly to the population…’
Anthony Fauci / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The great hero to emerge from the coronavirus crisis appears to be Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes for Health’s disease expert who has stood by the side of President Donald Trump and occasionally butted heads with him.
The Left, in particular, has made Fauci a focal point of its coronavirus rhetoric—claiming, when it is convenient to do so, that Trump should step aside and allow ‘experts’ to handle the situation, while generously heaping any blame on the president for a perceived lack of progress.
Trump, going against all instincts, has largely followed the advice of Fauci in areas such as the White House social-distancing guidelines, recently extended through April.
In fact, the US thus far has been successful in maintaining a far lower mortality rate than many of the other major countries that have been afflicted with the global pandemic.
But the even lower mortality rate in Germany, which is leading the world in its response despite its close proximity to some of the countries most ravaged by the virus, may suggest that Fauci—and many others like him—are actually a big part of the problem.
German Efficiency at Work
Several US media outlets recently have taken note of the European country’s success.
According to the virus-trackers at Johns Hopkins University, Germany had just over 800 deaths as of Wednesday with around 73,000 confirmed cases, making the mortality rate slightly over 1 percent.
The rate has risen somewhat over the past week but remains among the lowest, with most citing mass testing as the reason.
“The reason why we in Germany have so few deaths at the moment compared to the number of infected can be largely explained by the fact that we are doing an extremely large number of lab diagnoses,” said virologist Christian Drosten, whose team developed the first test for the new virus, according to the Associated Press.
Germany’s mobilization effort began in mid-January, around the time that the first case hit Europe.
“It was clear that if the epidemic swept over here from China, then we had to start testing,” Hendrik Borucki—a spokesman for Bioscientia Healthcare, which operates 19 labs in Germany—told the AP.
It was not long until concern over the virus reached American shores as well.
After reported cases in Washington state first surfaced, Trump—despite being in the middle of an impeachment trial led by partisan House Democrats—first assembled the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force on Jan. 31.
That, however, is where the paths of the two countries began to diverge.
A Tale of Two Countries
Coronavirus testers administer screenings at a mobile station. / IMAGE: CNBC via Youtube
Germany’s response allowed for decentralized testing that could be achieved quickly and efficiently, thereby limiting the need for draconian mass-quarantines.
The AP estimated that Germany was currently conducting upward of 500,000 tests a week.
Meanwhile, rather than use existing test methods that had proven effective and easy to administer, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrambled to devise a unique testing procedure that was more complex and significantly hindered by government guidelines, according to another recent AP article.
All of the early tests had to be sent directly to the central lab at the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, resulting in drastic delays, as well as shortages of the CDC’s proprietary tests.
In Germany, by contrast, much of the testing was outsourced to private companies thanks to its deregulated healthcare model.
“Unburdened by a restrictive central regulatory body, since healthcare is administered at the state level in Germany, private companies moved quickly to mass produce those tests, meaning they could be rolled out rapidly to the population,” wrote Time magazine.
Both countries are currently administering the tests for free, but while the US testing requires pre-screened patients to be exhibiting some symptoms and/or to have come in contact with someone who tested positive, Germany has been able to test a broader swath of the population, providing a better count of virus carriers who may be asymptomatic.
Some scientific experts—including the developers of an Oxford University model that has recently gained traction—speculate that a much larger portion of the population than initially theorized may be walking around with the virus and may even have developed a “herd immunity” to it while continuing to spread it to the more vulnerable segment of the population with compromised immune systems.
“Between countries there are several reasons why the death rate might vary, but they’re very small compared to the impact of how many people get tested,” Liam Smeeth, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Time. “Germany very rapidly rolled out testing to a very large number of people, relative to the population.”
Streamlining the Bureaucracy
A medical researcher tests for coronavirus / IMAGE: CNBC via Youtube
The US response turned a significant corner after Trump declared a national emergency in mid-March—ironically using his broader, more centralized federal authority to circumvent some of the impractical hurdles.
While the president has pressed publicly for a fast response—including his early promises to streamline testing—the bureaucracy seems still to be standing in the way—not only in testing and containment matters, but also in the rush for a cure.
Fauci prominently second-guessed Trump’s optimistic promotion of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a promising potential treatment. He cautioned that evidence of the drug’s success was strictly anecdotal and that it still faced considerable clinical trials before gaining approval by the Food and Drug Administration for widespread use.
That process, optimistically, could take months if not years. Many other pharmaceutical companies face the same dilemma while developing vaccines.
Moderna, which just began its human trials, has touted the possibility of a virus vaccine by fall, according to Barron’s. Several others hope to begin trials this month.
But that waiting game, left in the hands of overly-cautious pencil pushers with regularly shifting goal posts, poses a serious risk for both Trump and the entire country as it continues to interfere with Americans’ daily lives and commercial activity.
Ticking Time-Bomb?
President Donald Trump discusses coronavirus screening with medical experts. / IMAGE: CNBC via Youtube
The president’s leading scientific advisers have already been doing what the scientific community does best—recalibrating their original hypotheses after the nationwide social experiment of ‘social distancing’ appeared to have yielded mixed results.
Trump has, likewise, been forced to retreat from his early optimism regarding an Easter-time return to normalcy and instead embrace the ‘expert’ projections of a six-figure death count.
“[I]n a matter of weeks, relying on sketchy and incomplete data, government experts have pivoted from offering common-sense steps to fight a virus to declaring government-imposed house arrest,” said American Greatness.
“‘Flattening the curve’ is old news,” it continued; “preventing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans requires tyrannical diktats that a month ago freedom-loving Americans could scarcely imagine.”
The conservative site said that even if Trump continues following the best scientific advice promoting a measured and tempered response, public patience and goodwill may reach its peak by the end of the month, leaving him the target.
“The president is trying to do the right thing but this is a breaking point,” American Greatness said. “If Trump ruins the economy and torches his solid economic achievements based on a handful of flawed models and the evolving opinions of unsure advisors, it will be hard to walk it back.”
‘It is “HELL” dealing with the Dems, had to give up some stupid things in order to get the “big picture” done…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was berated by both sides of the aisle last week after forcing the House of Representatives to return in order to pass a $2-trillion economic stimulus package, with even more funds flowing out of the Federal Reserve, in order to relieve the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
But Massie defended himself Tuesday, saying his effort to put the brakes on a hasty, pork-laden plan to add massive amounts of debt to the economy was to prevent President Donald Trump from compounding the already dire economic and health crises, the New York Post reported.
Massie said his biggest concern was not the price tag, though; rather, it was the way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had approached it, which risked setting a dangerous legislative precedent, he told the Disruption Zone podcast.
“I tried calling [Trump] up after the whole thing went down to smooth things over and to point out that, ‘Hey look, I got what I needed [and] I strengthened your hand, because now Pelosi doesn’t have a precedent where everybody stays home and she gets to pass bills in the House,” Massie said.
However, he said he had to leave a message and that the president did not return his call.
Trump tweeted his own take on Friday, the day the House passed the bill, accusing Massie of grandstanding for attention and later calling on him to be expelled from the Republican Party.
…& costly. Workers & small businesses need money now in order to survive. Virus wasn’t their fault. It is “HELL” dealing with the Dems, had to give up some stupid things in order to get the “big picture” done. 90% GREAT! WIN BACK HOUSE, but throw Massie out of Republican Party!
Massie’s threat of a roll-call vote required a quorum of at least half the House to return for the vote, even as concerns over the spread of the coronavirus had forced some into self-imposed quarantine and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced he had tested positive for the virus.
But the rush to pass the bill had many fiscal conservatives alarmed that the cost of such federal overreach would be far worse than the disease—or at the very least, would compound the problem substantially.
Four senators nearly derailed the upper-chamber’s passage, flagging fears that a drafting error would have incentivized essential workers on the front lines to quit their jobs by offering better pay through unemployment.
Others expressed alarm at the radical left-wing wish-list items that Pelosi had added into the bill, many of which had little to do with the crisis.
The bill was the third of its kind to clear the House in the wake of the pandemic.
“Pelosi’s plan is that this third virus bill was a down payment and that she has a fourth bill that’s practically already written that has all of the stuff she couldn’t get in this bill,” Massie said.
Already, the San Francisco liberal has signaled that if another stimulus bill is required, she will seek to retract Trump’s 2017 tax reforms, restoring blue-state-friendly loopholes that allow wealthy 1-percenters to deduct additional state and local taxes.
“If somebody stands and objects to the fourth bill if nobody had objected to the third bill, they would say, ‘You don’t have a leg to stand on. We’ve already done this. We set a precedent,” Massie continued. “We’ve already agreed that it’s okay for people to stay home and violate the Constitution and Nancy Pelosi can pass the bill without us here.’”
Massie was not the only congressman to consider blocking the rush job.
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, a frequent Trump ally, also relayed his reservations about it, telling the New York Post prior to its passage that he would like to see the House forced to return and debate it as well. (Massie’s motion for a roll call was ultimately overruled.)
“The bill the Senate is preparing has had very significant viewing, discussing and rewording, as it should when there is time to have groups of elected officials reviewing language and considering its effects,” Gohmert told the Post.
Although he did not, in principle, object to the idea of remote passage using the House’s unanimous consent rule, the concerns that Pelosi introduced into her version of the bill made it a nonstarter for that particular legislation, he added.
“If we have that opportunity, then it actually might be possible to U.C. a bill of this magnitude,” Gohmert said.
“However, the rather massive bill Speaker Pelosi is pushing has not been widely distributed, fiercely debated or amended repeatedly, with the actual effects fully contemplated,” he continued. “Therefore, it would need to be prevented from being voice voted or passed by Unanimous Consent.”
Despite his having incurred the wrath of the president, Massie expressed confidence that he could regain his favor once the dust had settled.
“I believe he was upset because he had a misunderstanding of the situation,” said the libertarian lawmaker.
Fortunately, Massie said, Trump’s recently appointed chief of staff, former Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, was “one of my best friends.”
‘The last people who need help right now are the well-off…’
Nancy Pelosi/IMAGE: YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Even some liberals oppose House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to roll back parts of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Pelosi hinted in an interview with the New York Times last weekend that congressional Democrats would try to retroactively reverse the tax law’s $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction in the next Wuhan virus relief package.
But liberals pointed out that getting rid of the SALT-deduction cap would disproportionately hurt the lower and middle classes while benefiting the ultra-wealthy.
“The priority for Speaker Pelosi at this time should not be a tax break for the well-to-do. Repealing the SALT cap would be a huge mistake. The last people who need help right now are the well-off taxpayers who would be affected by this change,” said Morris Pearl, the chairman of Patriotic Millionaires, a Democratic activist group.
Huffington Post reporter Emily Peck similarly pointed out how “unbelievable” Pelosi’s plan is.
This is almost unbelievable. Of all the things to do to help people; she wants to… give upper middle class people a tax break. Ok, that seems unnecessary, but also it wouldnt arrive until NEXT YEAR? Pelosi Floats New Stimulus Plan: Rolling Back SALT Cap https://t.co/TsERxw1M8E
And Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, said that Pelosi’s plan to “tailor” the SALT reduction to middle class workers is simply not realistic because “relatively few middle-class people claim SALT.”
“Democrats want to be the party of working people, prioritizing tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers, even in blue states, is not the right thing to do,” Pearl explained. “We already have too many politicians in Washington whose answer to every problem is to cut taxes for the rich.”
Todd McMurtry could ride Trump enthusiasm to success in Kentucky…
Thomas Massie/Photo by Gage Skidmore
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s Republican primary challenger is picking up speed after Massie broke with President Trump and the rest of the congressional GOP in an attempt to slow down the $2.2 trillion Wuhan virus relief package Trump signed last week.
Massie forced a formal, recorded roll call vote when the bill reached the House, arguing that the leftist pork House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had stuffed into the stimulus bill was a disservice to future generations of Americans.
Forcing the representatives to go on record would ensure that “our republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent,” Massie said.
But Todd McMurtry, a Republican candidate who recently won the endorsement of the Republican Jewish Coalition, argued Massie’s attempted delay proves he doesn’t have the American public’s best interests in mind.
At a time of unprecedented crisis in our country, Massie tried to make it all about him. We need a Congressman who will earn respect, build influence, and get things done for the Commonwealth of Kentucky and for our country. It’s time for a change. #MassieMistakespic.twitter.com/0PyacMckto
One GOP consultant said Trump’s influence in Kentucky could significantly help McMurtry.
“This obviously earth-shattering news event combined with Trump’s intervention has definitely given McMurtry the break that he needed to change the trajectory of the race,” said Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based Republican strategist, told The Hill.
Massie, however, has continued to defend his decision to push for a roll call vote.
“I was just standing up for the Constitution, and I did it in a professional manner that did not delay the bill,” Massie told Fox News. “This is the biggest transfer of wealth in human history.”
‘Wherever we can get people out of jails, out of prisons, now, we are…’
Andrew Cuomo / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) New York released at least eight sex offenders, three of whom were convicted of child molestation and assault, as part of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s initiative to decrease prison populations as the state battles the Wuhan virus pandemic.
Cuomo announced last week that prisons would release 1,100 parole violators to prevent the jails from becoming hot spots for the virus.
As a result, Monroe County Jail released nearly 50 prisoners, some of whom have violent criminal histories, according to WIVB-TV.
“We’re releasing people who are in jails because they violated parole for non-serious reasons,” Cuomo said Friday night on MSNBC. “And wherever we can get people out of jails, out of prisons, now, we are.”
Nine of the released prisoners are now stay at a Holiday Inn Express, the outlet reports, including three child rapists considered “most likely to re-offend” by the state.
Greece Chief of Police Patrick Phelan blasted the move, calling it dangerous.
“It doesn’t make any sense. If you could present an argument to me that makes sense, I’m willing to listen. But this doesn’t make any sense,” Phelan said.
“So you have a violent criminal who’s done time in state prison who’s been given the chance of parole, and not followed the conditions of their parole. That’s who you’re talking about right now,” he continued.
New York’s department of corrections told WIVB-TV that it decided which prisoners to release based on a “review of the underlying technical violation [of parole], not the original crime.”
But Phelan said his department wasn’t even notified.
“We weren’t told by anyone,” he said. “I think good practice would be if you’re going to release convicted felons—some of them very violent some of those level-3 sex offenders—you might want to give law enforcement the heads up.”
‘I think they should be the only ones in packed churches on Sunday…’
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center / IMAGE via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A New York health executive was fired this week after she suggested President Donald Trump’s supporters should be forced to “pledge to give up their ventilators for someone else” as the coronavirus spreads in the state.
In a post on Facebook, Laura Krolczyk, vice president for external affairs at New York’s Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, posted an article about the Trump administration’s reluctance to pay corporations such as Ventec and General Motors to produce ventilators, according to the Buffalo News.
“Trump supporters need to pledge to give up their ventilators for someone else … and not go to the hospital,” Krolczyk wrote.
Lisa LaTrovato, director of development at Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute, responded, “I think they should be the only ones in packed churches on Sunday.”
Krloczyk replied: “They should barricade themselves in there and ride this out.”
When another user confronted Krloczyk and LaTrovato for “saying we [should decide] who lives and [who dies] based on political views,” Krloczyk responded, “That’s literally what [Trump] is saying.”
“Take your ‘wow’ and comprehend what your hero is saying,” Krloczyk said to the user.
“Your hero is saying YOU don’t need a ventilator. So don’t take one,” she continued. “Also don’t cash your stimulus check. It’s all a hoax. Chew some ibuprofen and be on with your day.”
Republican strategist Michael Caputo flagged the exchange, and Roswell Park condemned Krloczyk’s comments, calling them “inappropriate.”
Krolczyk was initially placed on administrative leave but has since been fired, according to Annie Deck–Miller, a spokeswoman for the hospital. Hauptman Woodward has also placed LaTrovato on leave.
“This behavior is not tolerated at Roswell Park,” the company said in a statement. “If any team members act in a way that does not accord with that commitment, we will take swift and appropriate action, just as we did in this instance.”
Both Krolczyk and LaTrovato worked for Democratic politicians before entering the healthcare industry, according to the Buffalo News. Krolczyk worked for Hillary Clinton and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and LaTrovato worked for former Rep. Louise Slaughter.
‘I think he’s learned that you can’t gaslight a virus…’
Al Gore/Photo by campuspartybrasil (CC)
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Former Vice President Al Gore said President Donald Trump needs to heed the experts and scientific research that support climate change in the same way that he has with the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump was among the many who initially questioned the severity of the outbreak and encouraged Americans to go about their daily lives until early March.
He has since embraced his new role as a ‘war-time’ president, putting himself front and center at daily press briefings alongside the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force.
Gore praised Trump for his change of heart in the fight against the coronavirus after expressing early skepticism.
“Now, I think the president—to his credit—has been moving away from that,” Gore said in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, according to Raw Story.
“I think he’s learned that you can’t gaslight a virus,” Gore continued. “You’ve really got to pay attention to what the scientific facts are.”
The longtime environmental activist also threw in a plug for his favorite pet cause, drawing a false equivalency between the work of epidemiologists and climatologists whose apocalyptic global-warming forecasts have been notoriously “torqued up,” according to Gore himself.
“And, by the way, we need to do that where the climate crisis is concerned, too, because it’s exactly the same thing,” Gore said.
Much like Gore’s own climate alarmism, coronavirus fearmongering in the media—and even among some publicity-hungry scientists—has run rampant with dire projections that have since been revised and downgraded.
Several outlets have been called out for their misleading or false claims and repeated efforts to smear the president by politicizing the pandemic. Democrats including current presidential contender Joe Biden have used manipulated video to distort his words, as a Washington Post fact-check revealed.
Since declaring a national emergency, Trump has made the virus his top priority and is following the expertise of advisers like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped to establish the White House’s social-distancing guidelines.
Fauci’s recommendations have included restricting groups to no more than 10 people, which many states have now ordered, effectively shutting down a major portion of commercial activity and sending Trump’s historically bullish economy into likely recession.
“And we still have states that have not adopted the kind of policies that Dr. Fauci and the real experts have advised, partly because they’ve made it kind of a political partisan kind of issue,” Gore said, HuffPost reported.
Gore said he sympathizes with Trump supporters who believed the president when he said that the Left’s sensationalist hyping of the coronavirus was a hoax.
“I don’t agree with his policies, but those who follow him—I’m afraid many of them have been misled into thinking that some of his earlier statements about using the word hoax—and he used it in a specialized way—but saying it was going to disappear, those kinds of things,” Gore said. “I feel badly for those who believe that stuff and have not been protecting themselves.” Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
‘Millionaires don’t need a new tax break as the federal government spends trillions of dollars to fight a pandemic…’
Nancy Pelosi / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested on Monday that Democrats would try to roll back a portion of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law in Congress’s next coronavirus relief bill.
When asked what steps Congress would take to provide Americans with additional financial relief in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Pelosi told the New York Times that retroactively reversing the 2017 tax law’s $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction was one option Democrats were considering.
The SALT-deduction cap prevents the tax code from subsidizing higher state taxes, which is why many of the liberal states, such as New York and California, opposed it.
Reversing the SALT cap would largely benefit high-income taxpayers, according to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and hurt lower to middle class Americans—the group that Congress needs to be assisting right now.
“This is a nonstarter,” Grassley said in a statement. “Millionaires don’t need a new tax break as the federal government spends trillions of dollars to fight a pandemic.”
A full repeal of the SALT cap would reduce federal revenues by nearly $77 billion, according to a congressional Joint Committee on Taxation report last year. Meanwhile, Americans earning $1 million or more per year would earn an additional $40 billion in benefits, the New York Times reported.
Pelosi argued any change would be “tailored to focus on middle-class earners and include limitations on the higher end,” but Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., pointed out that any additional benefits middle-class workers gained from a SALT reduction would immediately go towards subsidizing “wealthy individuals in high tax states and municipalities—like the Speaker’s home in San Francisco, California.”
“The ink is hardly dry on a $2 trillion-plus emergency package,” Toomey continued.
“It’s far too soon to know whether and of what nature additional legislation is needed,” he said. “If we determine that another measure is necessary, it should not be the vehicle for Speaker Pelosi’s partisan, parochial wish list.”
‘Prior to being transported to the hospital, Gary and Wanda clearly stated what they had done…’
Hydroxychloroquine / IMAGE: CBS Evening News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The police in Mesa, Arizona, said that the suspicious circumstances surrounding a couple who drank aquarium cleaner and claimed to believe it was a coronavirus cure had not resulted in a criminal investigation.
Det. Jason Flam, public information officer for the Mesa Police Department, said that after ingesting the poisonous chloroquine phosphate solution, Wanda Jo Lenius, 61, and her husband Gary, 68, had spoken to the police and acknowledged doing it intentionally.
“Prior to being transported to the hospital, Gary and Wanda clearly stated what they had done,” Flam told Liberty Headlines.
Gary later died as a result.
Flam said the case was being handled solely by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Several inconsistencies appeared to suggest a possible hoax orchestrated to smear President Donald Trump, who had previously touted the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for coronavirus.
The drug is currently undergoing clinical trials. Anthony Fauci, a leading pandemic expert with the National Institutes of Health who is serving on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, urged restraint but said he did not disagree with Trump in “substance” over the drug’s life-saving potential.
Nonetheless, many in the left-wing media attempted to smear Trump over it, alleging that his claims amounted to disinformation.
Some have used the statements to rationalize partisan efforts to stop airing Trump’s daily press briefings, and Twitter has attempted to scrub references to the drug on its platform.
After the Lenius’s story broke, several outlets omitted the fact that the couple had ingested fish-tank cleaner, misleadingly suggesting that they had been poisoned by the malaria drug Trump had tweeted about.
Wanda Lenius also repeatedly blamed the president, even though there were no indications that the two were experiencing coronavirus symptoms at the time that they took the supposed cure.
Although preliminary reports declined to identify the pair, the Free Beacon was able to confirm their identities based on information provided in a local report. It discovered that they were frequent donors to left-wing causes including 314 Action, a stem-cell research advocacy organization; and the pro-abortion Emily’s List.
Online records also show that the Leniuses had waged an extensive legal battle with their previous employer, the John Deere Company, over claims including workplace harassment, discrimination and emotional harm.
And some conservative media sites, after further vetting, were reporting that Wanda Lenius had a history of mental illness, as well as a fraught relationship with her husband.
NEW:
Court records show the wife who fed her husband fish cleaner (poison?) has a history of mental illness (paranoia, depression) and had considered divorcing her husband as far back as 2012.
