Psaki dodges question of whether Biden still considers Cuomo 'the gold standard' for COVID-19 leader

[Hammster]

Instead of lying. So I see it as a definite improvement. It's going to be a different administration, now.

One of obfuscation, it appears, as she circles back. Yeah...much better.

 

[The Barbarian]

One of obfuscation, it appears, as she circles back. Yeah...much better.

I notice that Biden is pretty outspoken himself. Maybe that's the point.

 

[Hammster]

I notice that Biden is pretty outspoken himself. Maybe that's the point.

Let me get this straight. Because Biden is outspoken, his Press Secretary can obfuscate? Where’s the logic in that?

 

[The Barbarian]

Seems to me, a rational way to find out what Biden thinks about something unusual would be to ask him. Asking one of his spokespeople might get your an answer or it might not. Go figure.

Since Biden doesn't seem shy about telling people what he thinks, it seems like a good idea to ask him.

This particular issue might be a big problem for the GOP.

The Miami Herald’s investigative reporters have already done that, revealing inconsistent statistics on deaths between the Florida Department of Health and the county medical examiners.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article242561781.html

Particularly, since Ron sent a swat team into the house of a state employee who documented his cover-up of the true death rate in Florida. You think any one smart enough to be a governor, would realize that a tech nerd would have already thought to protect herself by installing cameras that would document the fact. So You Tube shows the governor's troops charging in and rounding up her kids at gunpoint.


Cuomo admits "mistake" in withholding nursing home deaths

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a press conference on Monday that he made a "mistake" in not providing information about nursing home deaths from COVID-19 in a timely fashion. But Cuomo continued to defend his and his administration's handling of the crisis, saying he would trust his top health adviser, Dr. Howard Zucker, with "my mother's care."


Cuomo has long faced criticism for his administration's handling of the release of data related to deaths from COVID-19 in nursing homes, which intensified last week when one of his top aides admitted that they were concerned the data was "going to be used against us."

In recent weeks, the state has been forced to acknowledge the nursing home resident death toll is nearly 15,000. The state had previously reported a death toll of 8,500 — a number that excluded residents who died after being taken to hospitals.
Cuomo admits "mistake" in withholding nursing home deaths - CBS News

Here's how that worked in Florida...

In April, Florida began hiding the list of deaths from county medical examiners, which had always been public before that point. In May, DeSantis fired data scientist Rebekah Jones after she refused to stop posting data that was both accurate and public. Jones created her own dashboard in June, in hopes of giving Florida residents a more accurate view of what was going on. However, since then the state has been making it harder to get basic information on topics like hospitalization rates, and persecuting Jones—ending with a raid on her home in which weapons were pointed at her children. In the wake of that raid, a Republican official resigned his position, saying he no longer wished to serve Florida’s current government in any capacity.
...
But even if Jones’ computers were carried away in this politically motivated raid, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel couldn’t help but notice another … oddity in Florida’s COVID-19 data. This particular strangeness was a sudden and unexplained gap in reporting of deaths related to COVID-19, one that began just days before the election.
...
The gap was actually noticed first by University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. On his personal website, Salemi posted the data, but drew no immediate conclusion, saying that he needed “to understand this process more.”
Ron DeSantis gave Trump a last-minute boost by covering up Florida COVID-19 deaths before election

Cuomo messed up and now he's manned up and apologized.

Do you think Ron DeSantis will be able to do that?

Don't hold your breath. He's the new republican party.

 

[Hammster]

Seems to me, a rational way to find out what Biden thinks about something unusual would be to ask him. Asking one of his spokespeople might get your an answer or it might not. Go figure.

Since Biden doesn't seem shy about telling people what he thinks, it seems like a good idea to ask him.

This particular issue might be a big problem for the GOP.

The Miami Herald’s investigative reporters have already done that, revealing inconsistent statistics on deaths between the Florida Department of Health and the county medical examiners.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article242561781.html

Particularly, since Ron sent a swat team into the house of a state employee who documented his cover-up of the true death rate in Florida. You think any one smart enough to be a governor, would realize that a tech nerd would have already thought to protect herself by installing cameras that would document the fact. So You Tube shows the governor's troops charging in and rounding up her kids at gunpoint.


Cuomo admits "mistake" in withholding nursing home deaths

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a press conference on Monday that he made a "mistake" in not providing information about nursing home deaths from COVID-19 in a timely fashion. But Cuomo continued to defend his and his administration's handling of the crisis, saying he would trust his top health adviser, Dr. Howard Zucker, with "my mother's care."


Cuomo has long faced criticism for his administration's handling of the release of data related to deaths from COVID-19 in nursing homes, which intensified last week when one of his top aides admitted that they were concerned the data was "going to be used against us."

In recent weeks, the state has been forced to acknowledge the nursing home resident death toll is nearly 15,000. The state had previously reported a death toll of 8,500 — a number that excluded residents who died after being taken to hospitals.
Cuomo admits "mistake" in withholding nursing home deaths - CBS News

Here's how that worked in Florida...

In April, Florida began hiding the list of deaths from county medical examiners, which had always been public before that point. In May, DeSantis fired data scientist Rebekah Jones after she refused to stop posting data that was both accurate and public. Jones created her own dashboard in June, in hopes of giving Florida residents a more accurate view of what was going on. However, since then the state has been making it harder to get basic information on topics like hospitalization rates, and persecuting Jones—ending with a raid on her home in which weapons were pointed at her children. In the wake of that raid, a Republican official resigned his position, saying he no longer wished to serve Florida’s current government in any capacity.
...
But even if Jones’ computers were carried away in this politically motivated raid, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel couldn’t help but notice another … oddity in Florida’s COVID-19 data. This particular strangeness was a sudden and unexplained gap in reporting of deaths related to COVID-19, one that began just days before the election.
...
The gap was actually noticed first by University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. On his personal website, Salemi posted the data, but drew no immediate conclusion, saying that he needed “to understand this process more.”
Ron DeSantis gave Trump a last-minute boost by covering up Florida COVID-19 deaths before election

Cuomo messed up and now he's manned up and apologized.

Do you think Ron DeSantis will be able to do that?

Don't hold your breath. He's the new republican party.

Here’s the issue that you are missing. Is asking him the best way to find out what he’s thinking? Sure. Nobody is arguing otherwise. That’s not even the discussion. The topic at hand is that his Press Secretary, the official spokesperson of the President, avoided answering a question. Had she said that’s she’d “circle back to it”, that would still come off as dodging, but it would have at least been an honest answer. What she did, though, was to avoid answering a direct yes/no question, and instead talked about a policy. When the interviewer asked again, even stating that it was a yes/no question, she denied that it was, repeated what she had just said.

 

[The Barbarian]

Can you imagine what the reaction from the right would have been, if Cuomo had responded to criticism of his handling of the pandemic the way De Santis did? What would the reaction have been, if instead of apologizing, he sent swat teams to pull guns on the children of his critics and confiscate their computers?

We all know, don't we?

 

[Hammster]

Can you imagine what the reaction from the right would have been, if Cuomo had responded to criticism of his handling of the pandemic the way De Santis did? What would the reaction have been, if instead of apologizing, he sent swat teams to pull guns on the children of his critics and confiscate their computers?

We all know, don't we?

If only that was the topic of this thread.

 

[The Barbarian]

Here’s the issue that you are missing. Is asking him the best way to find out what he’s thinking? Sure. Nobody is arguing otherwise. That’s not even the discussion. The topic at hand is that his Press Secretary, the official spokesperson of the President, avoided answering a question.

Instead of lying about it, as has been the custom for presidential spokespeople for the past four years.

Although looking back, I'll have to admit that it is true that Trump's people sometimes merely avoided answering questions; they didn't always just lie. I'll certainly give you credit for your criticism of them whenever they did that, if you tell me that you did.

Did you?

In all fairness, do you know of any presidential administration, whose spokespeople didn't avoid answering questions at least sometimes?

I can't think of one, at least in the last century. Granted, it's Joe Biden who's president, and therefore we should expect more of him than usual. If that's your position, I tend to agree.

 

[The Barbarian]

If only that was the topic of this thread.

I get it. We're talking about the tendency of presidential spokespeople to avoid answering questions, not the hypocrisy of criticizing a democrat governor for things a republican governor continues to do.

I'm still having trouble with the concept that this behavior is something unusual in presidential spokespeople. Do you have some data for that?

 

[Hammster]

Instead of lying about it, as has been the custom for presidential spokespeople for the past four years.

Although looking back, I'll have to admit that it is true that Trump's people sometimes merely avoided answering questions; they didn't always just lie. I'll certainly give you credit for your criticism of them whenever they did that, if you tell me that you did.

Did you?

In all fairness, do you know of any presidential administration, whose spokespeople didn't avoid answering questions at least sometimes?

I can't think of one, at least in the last century. Granted, it's Joe Biden who's president, and therefore we should expect more of him than usual. If that's your position, I tend to agree.

Dishonesty is dishonesty, whether it’s through lying or obfuscation. You seem to have a problem with one, but not the other.

 

[civilwarbuff]

Those half a million dead Americans are a fact that we're just going to have to accept because he bungled his response to the epidemic.

No he didn't. When he shut down chinese from coming here at the start the left, including your buddy Biden, called him zenophobic.

Our foreign policy is in shambles.

Because we don't bow and scrape before them like Obama? Because we don't let so-called friends take advantage of us? Because we don't send cash to enemies? We hold treaty signatories accountable?......I like that kind of shambles.

he's been able to get vaccines out faster than people thought he could.

Because the Trump admin got everything moving and ready for the 1st of the year. Remember all those on the left who pooh-poohed Trump (really much worse than that) when he said a vaccine would be available by late 2020/early 2021?

It's going to be a different administration, for which most Americans are very grateful.

It is going to be different but I will wait on the accolades.

 

[Hammster]

I get it. We're talking about the tendency of presidential spokespeople to avoid answering questions, not the hypocrisy of criticizing a democrat governor for things a republican governor continues to do.

I'm still having trouble with the concept that this behavior is something unusual in presidential spokespeople. Do you have some data for that?

No, you still don’t get it. We are talking about this one incident. But it doesn’t seem that anyone on the left can admit that she went out of her way to avoid answering the question.

 

[The Barbarian]

I get it. We're talking about the tendency of presidential spokespeople to avoid answering questions, not the hypocrisy of criticizing a democrat governor for things a republican governor (Ron DeSantis) continues to do.

I'm still having trouble with the concept that this behavior is something unusual in presidential spokespeople. Do you have some data for that?

No, you still don’t get it.

Ah, there's something unique about President Biden that makes it an issue when his spokesperson does what the spokespeople of other presidents have done? What is that?

We are talking about this one incident.

Yes. I'm trying to figure out why you find it uniquely remarkable, when it's been SOP for all the presidential spokespeople for a very long time.

But it doesn’t seem that anyone on the left can admit that she went out of her way to avoid answering the question.

I mentioned it several times. I'm just wondering why anyone finds it remarkable that she did what every other presidential spokesman has done for at least a hundred years. Why is that?

 

[Hammster]

I get it. We're talking about the tendency of presidential spokespeople to avoid answering questions, not the hypocrisy of criticizing a democrat governor for things a republican governor (Ron DeSantis) continues to do.

I'm still having trouble with the concept that this behavior is something unusual in presidential spokespeople. Do you have some data for that?



Ah, there's something unique about President Biden that makes it an issue when his spokesperson does what the spokespeople of other presidents have done? What is that?



Yes. I'm trying to figure out why you find it uniquely remarkable, when it's been SOP for all the presidential spokespeople for a very long time.



I mentioned it several times. I'm just wondering why anyone finds it remarkable that she did what every other presidential spokesman has done for at least a hundred years. Why is that?

I didn’t say it was remarkable. It was just wrong. You’re the one who’s tried to make excuses.

 

[The Barbarian]

Those half a million dead Americans are a fact that we're just going to have to accept because he bungled his response to the epidemic.

No he didn't.

He did, for example when he shut down chinese from coming here at the start. But he let travelers from China, who weren't Chinese return. Trump was fixated on "the China virus" and never realized that he was letting infected people come in freely.

But that was just the beginning. He failed to provide guidance on social distancing, masks, and testing. He told people the danger was a "hoax" and that it was going to go away "like a miracle" at the same time he admitted to Woodward that he knew it was very bad and that he liked to "downplay" the danger. C'mon.

your buddy Biden, called him zenophobic.

the left, including your buddy Biden, called him zenophobic.

Which is true. See above. The problem this time is that his xenophobia made him mess up, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Our foreign policy is in shambles.

Because we don't bow and scrape before them like Obama?

They respected Obama, because Obama was trustworthy. So when Obama called for a boycott of Iran over nuclear weapons programs, they all complied, seizing Iranian money in their banks until Iran complied with Obama's demands. And they didn't get their money back until they did comply.

Trump abrogated the agreement, allowing Iran to resume nuclear weapons development, BTW. Another bungle.

We hold treaty signatories accountable?

Trump's failure to keep treaty and other international agreements is why we've lost face and leadership in the world. The above instance is just one of many.

Biden was criticized for being too optimistic about getting the vaccines out to people as fast as he said he could, but he did it.

Because the Trump admin got everything moving and ready for the 1st of the year.

Actually, the companies developing the vaccines did that. But that's not the problem...

Trump Administration Had No Vaccine Distribution Plan
Trump Administration Had No Vaccine Distribution Plan, Says White House

Remember all those on the left who pooh-poohed Trump (really much worse than that) when he said a vaccine would be available by late 2020/early 2021?

But it wasn't until Biden's people got a plan to make it available. It's one thing to have the vaccine, and quite another to get it in people's arms. As usual, Trump was a day late and a dollar short. Biden realized the problem and we are doing much better now. It's going to be a different administration.

It is going to be different but I will wait on the accolades.

President Biden has finalized deals to buy 200 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of July, increasing the likelihood of delivering on his promise to have all Americans inoculated by mid-summer.


Biden announced the latest deals, which are part of a plan he unveiled two weeks ago, during remarks made at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday.


"We've now purchased enough vaccine supplies to vaccinate all Americans," Biden said. "Now we're working to get those vaccines into the arms of millions of people."


Additionally, Biden said, Pfizer and Moderna have agreed to expedite the delivery of 100 million doses each by a month — moving them up to May instead of June.
Biden Announces Deal For 200 Million More COVID-19 Vaccines

 

[The Barbarian]

I didn’t say it was remarkable. It was just wrong.

I guess I missed where you hammered the Trump administration for it. Can you point to an example?

You’re the one who’s tried to make excuses.

If noting that Biden's spokesperson did what every administration spokesperson has done for the past hundred years is an "excuse", I guess so. I'm just glad she doesn't lie the way Trump's people did.

 

[Hammster]

I guess I missed where you hammered the Trump administration for it. Can you point to an example?

It’s in the same thread where you gave that administration a pass for obfuscating.

 

[The Barbarian]

It’s in the same thread where you gave that administration a pass for obfuscating.

I'm pretty sure noting that dodging questions has been a habit of presidential spokesmen, isn't "giving them a pass, so in short, there isn't one? O.K.

But if you do have one, wherein you criticized Trump people for their obfuscations, I'd be pleased to see it. Otherwise, we're pretty much done here.

 

[Hammster]

But if you do have one, wherein you criticized Trump people for their obfuscations, I'd be pleased to see it. Otherwise, we're pretty much done here.

And I’m pretty sure you never gave the Trump administration a pass for obfuscating. As to past threads, I don’t think I ever commented on any thread having to do with Trump’s press Secretaries. How many were there?

 

[Hammster]

I'm pretty sure noting that dodging questions has been a habit of presidential spokesmen, isn't "giving them a pass, so in short, there isn't one? O.K.

Sure you are. You are saying that because others have done it, we shouldn’t criticize.