Trump's fault?
A Virginia state senator says President Donald Trump is responsible for the death of an Arizona man and the hospitalization of his wife after they drank aquarium cleaner.
"Who thinks this couple would have drank fish tank cleaner absent @realDonaldTrump's suggestion?" state Sen. Scott Surovell, who heads the state's Senate Democratic caucus, tweeted last week. "One more reason to stop live broadcasts of his random thoughts & unvalidated theories of the day."
Trump, during one of his coronavirus briefings, said chloroquine, a derivative of which is used to treat malaria, had shown some promise in treating COVID-19, the disease stemming from the coronavirus.
The couple, who are in their 60s, drank the aquarium cleaner because it contained chloroquine. The woman told her husband she'd heard this was the right drug, so the pair quaffed it. They started to feel sick within half an hour and were taken to a local hospital, where the man died and his wife was in intensive care.
Surovell, of course, did not supply a link to a clip in which Trump suggested the nation seek chloroquine wherever they could find it because there is no such clip. That Surovell would even make the suggestion in this serious outbreak is sickening.
My team's not doing well
Once upon a time, Andrea Mitchell, was respected as an NBC newswoman. Now? Just another Democratic hack.
Even for far left MSNBC, she was fairly blatant in her biggest worry last week - the increase in President Donald Trump's recent approval ratings.
"We're also seeing some polls indicating the president's approval ratings among Democrats and independents skyrocketing to their highest levels yet," Mitchell said to former Obama administration official Jim Messina."Some 60% approval ratings for the way he's handling this crisis as he continues to hold these briefings. The briefings are working for the president."
Clearly frustrated, she added, "No matter what he says, people seem to be seeing him as a leader, at least more people do."
Mitchell also had envisioned a conspiracy theory about Democratic presidential front runner Joe Biden's lack of exposure.
"There is politics involved," she said. 'We've heard very little from, for instance, the more likely, most likely nominee of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden. He's having difficulty getting - projecting through this crisis as the campaign goes totally on hold."
Imagine how bad it might be for him if she weren't on Biden's side.
Professor Joe?
It wasn't a good week for Democratic presidential front runner Joe Biden. Not only did he record several more gaffes, but he had to battle an improperly working teleprompter in his broadcast updates while trying to remain relevant in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.
And even in a virtual campaign roundtable event, he became confused while trying to relate to a student.
"When I left the United States Senate," he told an 18-year-old student journalist, "I became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And I've spent a lot of time - and the University of Delaware has the Biden School as well, so I've spent a lot of time on campus with college students."
When he left the Senate, Biden actually became the vice president of the United States. When he left the White House in 2017, the University of Pennsylvania opened the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Engagement in Washington, D.C., and he was given the honorary title of Benjamin Franklin President Practice Professor.
His spokeswoman at the time, Kate Bedingfield, who is now his deputy campaign manager, said, "He will not be teaching classes." And he hasn't.
What we say here may not stay here
The switch to online classrooms for higher education students during the coronavirus has done something interesting - it's made professors worried about their leftist bias being exposed, according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"Simply put," Jeffrey A. Sachs, a lecturer at Acadia University in Canada, tweeted, "faculty are alarmed because they are paying attention."
The "they" in this case are conservatives. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, recently tweeted that students - who can much easier record lectures at home - should share online professors' examples of "blatant indoctrination."
"Now is the time," he said, "to document & expose the radicalism that has been infecting our schools."
Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale University, called the potential exposure "an attack on academic freedom." A Washington State professor said he wouldn't record his lectures. And Emily Farris, an associate professor at Texas Christian University, warned, "If you are recording a lecture on anything controversial, be prepared for right wing sites to ask students to share it."
Teachers who have confidence in what they espouse should have no problem with having their lectures made public, a Turning Point spokesman said.