Podcasts about phillip rucker

Donald Trump is spending a third night in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre after testing positive for COVID-19 on Friday.

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Donald Trump stormed out of a strange, deranged, and racist press conference today after rambling about Obamagate and telling an Asian-American reporter she should quote “ask China” her question. Just another Monday for the big wet baby-boss. Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci prepares to tell the Senate a hard truth: that the U.S. will face even more death if it opens up too soon. And lastly, big-brain inventor boy Elon Musk is having one hell of a meltdown May: after suing Alameda County for keeping his car factory closed, he’s restarting production in defiance of official orders and allegedly bullying his employees into going back to work alongside him. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW Donald Trump threw a classic tantrum at a strange press conference in the Rose Garden today, after multiple reporters challenged him with actual questions. The show started when Phillip Rucker of the Washington Post asked the President to specifically identify the crime that he thinks Barack Obama committed in “Obamagate.” Trump launched into a completely nonsensical, meaningless response, finishing with: QUOTE “You know what the crime is, the crime is very obvious to everybody, all you have to do is read the newspapers -- except yours.” ENDQUOTE Things moved from simply deranged to openly racist when CBS News’ Weija Jiang, who is Chinese-American, asked Trump why he was treating the pandemic like a quote “global competition.” Trump shot back quote: “Maybe that’s a question you should ask China.” CNN’s Kaitlin Collins then moved in to ask a question, and the press conference derailed from there, as Trump fled the stage when Collins continued to press him. This may be classic idiocy from the crybaby-in-chief, but Trump was clearly rattled afterwards, repeatedly firing off on Twitter about how fake news was colluding against him. Meanwhile, the White House has mandated mask use for all of its staff to control the coronavirus cases in its ranks, with the exception of Trump, who won’t be wearing one. To top it all off, Trump’s recent planned visit to an American facility that was producing protective equipment had to be scrapped, as the factory’s management were worried a Presidential delegation could expose their workers to the virus. That’s right -- the President and his inner circle are now more exposed to the virus than the workers who make the masks Trump refuses to wear. Fauci's Warning Dr. Anthony Fauci is at least trying to mitigate the Trump Administration’s disastrous coronavirus policy, but who knows if it’ll be enough. Today Fauci is set to testify before the Senate, where he plans to state that Americans will go through quote “needless suffering and death” endquote if they country relaxes its restrictions too quickly. And so far that’s exactly what’s been happening. States have been slowly casting off social distancing and isolation measures for weeks, which has researchers extremely nervous, especially as many places haven’t controlled the virus as tightly as some European countries that are also opening back up. France, Spain, Germany and Italy all loosened lockdown restrictions after weeks of strict isolation, letting their citizens go grocery shopping without permits, gather in small groups, and even visit gyms in some areas. It’s both an encouraging sign for the future and a massive warning, as the virus threatens to come back at any moment. Just look at Wuhan, the epicenter of the global pandemic, where officials reported six new cases in one neighborhood in the last few days. Experts think that if the U.S. opens up too soon, the second wave of the virus won’t even wait for fall -- it’ll flare up in a series of surges. And because the virus often lays dormant for a while, a period of calm after a state re-opens could just mean that a deadly reckoning is on the way when newly-infected patients need hospitalization. Fauci will do his best today to convince the Senate of this fact -- and then brace himself for the fallout from the Oval Office. Musk Meltdown Trump wasn’t the only one having a good old-fashioned meltdown yesterday. Big-headed billionaire Elon Musk just celebrated the birth of his ridiculously-named seventh child, but that hasn’t stopped him from throwing an absolute fit over California’s cautious re-opening policies. Musk announced on Twitter on Monday that his Tesla vehicle factory in Fremont, California would start production again in defiance of Alameda County’s rules. The county health inspector has repeatedly told Musk that he wanted to work together to get the factory open again on May 18, but six days was too long to wait. Musk claimed that he would be quote “on the line” with his workers, and said that he would be first to be arrested. The difference of course is that Musk is a literal billionaire, and all of these workers’ boss. He’s also been allegedly coercing them to show up to work by saying that despite county rules, previously furloughed workers will be on “unpaid leave” if they don’t come in. Musk and Tesla are also suing Alameda county over the plant’s shutdown. His main gripe is that the county kept Tesla’s plant shut down despite a statewide exemption for transportation business to stay open, which Musk thinks should apply to his luxury car factory. The county, meanwhile, says it’s been trying to work with the company to put together a safe reopening plan. But whatever efforts they’ve made weren’t good enough for Musk, who has built a career off of doing things his own way at all times, even when they’re illegal. At least he hasn’t called anyone a pedophile this time. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Lis Smith, the Democratic mastermind behind Pete Buttigieg’s always-on air campaign, suggested that Joe Biden should put on a live show in the videogame Fortnite, just like rapper Travis Scott. We’ll let that idea speak for itself. Doctors Without Borders, the famous international medical organization usually found providing aid on battlefields and disaster-stricken countries, is deploying a team to the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest, to help treat a hard-hit community. The U.S. looks more and more like a failed state every day. Judicial Watch, the right-wing legal gibberish organization most notable for putting its weirdly ripped president Tom Fitton on TV, has decided to dabble in a little bit of vote suppression. The organization filed a suit at the end of April intended to strong-arm several Pennsylvania counties into an aggressive voter purge, which the ACLU warns could strip eligible voters of their right before the November election. The Los Angeles City Council recently passed a law that allows tenants to sue their landlords if they violate the city’s order suspending evictions during the pandemic. Councilman Bob Blumenfeld said the law was about quote “giving the tenants a big stick.” endquote. That’s what we like to hear, Bob. HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn