Still no Stimulus Congress spent another day fighting and not passing a bill with economic relief for taxpayers or businesses. CNBC's Jim Cramer resorted to pleading with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but at the time of this mailing there is no resolution. Pelosi herself wasn't in very high spirits, either. She had a snippy answer when CNN's Dana Bash asked her about Trump tweets. Economy vs Health Amid increasingly insistent outcry from conservative pundits against taking measures to ensure the safety of Americans during a pandemic, President Trump has been leaning away from his temporary war footing and toward the idea of just getting everyone back out in public. He warns, as many of the pundits have, that the economic consequences of a shut-down could carry its own high death toll, even "suicides by the thousands." He's targeting Easter for the end to the lockdowns across the country. White House Coronavirus Task Force infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn't see any particular data to back such a high degree of optimism. Meanwhile the task force is, like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, very worried about New York. They suggest that people fleeing the state self-quarantine for two weeks at their destination to prevent potentially making things worse in other states. An Hour of Wasted Time Trump did a full hour interview on Covid-19 with Fox News on Tuesday. It wasn't well-received. Cough in Your Elbow CNN’s The Lead host Jake Tapper chided 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday for coughing into his hand live on TV. After Biden coughed into his hand and said, “Excuse me,” Tapper responded, “You know, you’re supposed to cough into your elbow… I learned that actually covering your White House.” Bad News Or rather, on the subject of being bad at news: Getting it wrong on the story of how an elderly couple poisoned themselves with fish tank cleaner because they .. well they frankly weren't too sharp. Nor was the terrible Axios coverage that created a Twitter storm. The hot take bonanza has claimed another victim on social media, the same one as a week ago: Matthew Dowd. For his insistence on weird comparisons to try and show the response to the pandemic is worse than the pandemic. MSNBC blew it big time, with a mangled tweet about Chris Hayes, incorrectly quoting him as saying coronavirus has the potential to KILL 50% of the U.S. population, rather than what he actually said, which was that unchecked it might *infect that many. The wrong tweet was up for hours and hours overnight before a correction. Yikes. 6.5.0 |