Trump’s wrongs on Supreme Court, virus; Biden errs

WASHINGTON » In a momentous week, President Donald Trump painted a fantastical portrait of a coronavirus that affects “virtually nobody” among the young as he faced a grim U.S. milestone of 200,000 deaths and he asserted a constitutional basis that doesn’t exist for rushing a replacement forth elate Justice Ruth Bad er Ginsburg over her dying wishes.

As Americans absorbed news of a grand jury decision not to prosecute Kentucky police officers for killing Breonna Taylor, Trump’s campaign pointed to purported economic progress for Blacks under his administration that didn’t tell the full story.

And with their first debate days away, Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden botched details about the pivotal Supreme Court vacancy and exaggerated his early statements on COVID-19, saying he declared it a pandemic in January when he didn’t.

A sampling of the misstatements on these topics and more:

200,000deaths

TRUMP, speaking hours before the U.S. hit a milestone of 200,000 virus deaths: “It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, and other problems. If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects.

... In some states thousands of people — nobody young — below the age of 18, like nobody—they have a strong immune system—who knows? ... It affects virtually nobody.” — rally Monday in Ohio.

THE FACTS: No, it’s affected quite a few.

In all, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 200,000 Tuesday, by far the highest in the world, hitting the once-unimaginable threshold six weeks before an election that is certain to be a referendum on his handling of the crisis. The number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days. It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama.

Kids certainly aren’t immune and Trump ignores racial disparities among those who get infected. He is also brazenly contradicting what he privately told journalist Bob Woodward.

“Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob,” he told Woodward in March. “It’s plenty of young people.”

Although it’s true that childrenare less likely than adults to develop COVID-19, the CDC has nevertheless counted more than 419,000 infections in Americans younger than 18, or about 8.5% of all cases. Racial disparities in the U.S. outbreak also extend to children, with Hispanic and Black children with C OVID -19 more likely to be hospitalized than white kids.

“It isn’t just the elderly,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’ s top infectious diseases expert, told CNN on Tuesday. He noted that a person of any age with underlying health conditions is at significantly higher risk of serious effects if they get COVID-19.

The total number of kids who have been infected but not confirmed is almost certainly far higher than the CDC figures, experts say, because those with mild or no symptoms are less likely to get tested. Kids also can spread disease without showing symptoms themselves.

The CDC in May also warned doctors to be on the lookout for a rare but lifethreatening inflammatory reaction in some children who’ve had the coronavirus. The condition had been reported in more than 100 children in New York, and in some kids in several other states and in Europe, with some deaths.

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TRUMP: “We’re rounding the corner— with or without a vaccine.” — interview Monday on “Fox & Friends.”

TRUMP, asked if the virus will “go away” if there isn’t a vaccine immediately available: “Sure, with time it goes away. And you’ll develop — you’ll develop herd-like, a herd mentality. It’s going to be — it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen.” — ABC News town hall on Sept. 15.

THE FACTS: Trump appeared to promote a “herd immunity” approach to the virus if a vaccine isn’t immediately available that would require millions more people to get infected and significantly higher deaths.

Public health officials say that to reach herd immunity, which is when the virus can no longer spread easily, at least 70% of the population, or 200million people, would need to develop antibodies. The U.S. currently has 7 million COVID-19 cases.

“Developing herd immunity doesn’t just take time, it works by infecting over ahundred million and killing hundreds of thousands,” University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers tweeted. “He’s describing a massacre.”

Fauci last month called a herd immunity approach “totally unacceptable” because “a lot of people are going todie.”

He also disagrees the virus is “rounding the corner,” saying Americans should not “underestimate” the pandemic and they will “need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy.” Fauci and othe rhealth experts such as Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have warned of a potentially bad fall because of dual threats of the coronavirus and the flu season.

Ginsburg

TRUMP, on Ginsburg’s request that her replacement be chosen by the next president: “I don’t know that she said that, or if that was written out by Adam Schiff, and Schumer and Pelosi. That came out of the wind. It sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal, or maybe Pelosi or Shifty Schiff.” — interview Monday with “Fox & Friends.”

THE FACTS: He’s making a baseless assertion that congressional Democrats invented Ginsburg’s request, which Trump is ignoring by announcing a new nominee Saturday.

In the days before her death on Sept. 18, Ginsburg told her granddaughter Clara Spera that “my most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” according to NPR’s Nina Totenberg, a longtime veteran Supreme Court reporter.

Totenberg, who is close to the Ginsburg family, reaffirmed her reporting this week. She told MSNBC on Monday that others in the roomat the time also heard Ginsburg make the statement, including her doctor. “I checked because I’m a reporter,” Totenberg said.

There is certainly no evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam Schiff or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer manufactured Ginsburg’s request, as Trump asserts. “Mr. President, this is low. Even for you,” Schiff tweeted Monday.

COURT NOMINATION

TRUMP, on why he’s moving forward with a nomination so close to the Nov. 3 election: “I have a constitutional obligation to put in nine judges— justices.”— remarks Tuesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: To be clear, there is no constitutional requirement to have nine justices on the Supreme Court.

The Constitution, in fact, specifies no size for the Supreme Court, and Congress has the power to change its size.

Over its history, the high court has varied in size from five to 10 justices, depending onthe number of judicial circuits in the U.S., according to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy director of the Federal Judicial Center. He explained that a major duty of the justices until the late 19th century was to try cases in the old circuit courts. Congress decided on nine circuits in the late 1860s.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed to expand the high court in the 1930s in a bid to gain broader judicial support for his New Deal policies, but that effort failed.

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BIDEN, arguing that a Supreme Court nomination should be decided by the next president so voters can “have their voice heard in who serves on the court”: “There’s no court session between now and the end of this election.” — remarks Sept. 20 in Philadelphia.

THE FACTS: He’s wrong on the scheduling. A new Supreme Court session begins Oct. 5, nearly one month before the election on Nov. 3. The justices are set to hear oral arguments in several cases during that time.

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TRUMP: “We need nine justices. You need that. With the unsolicited millions of ballots that they’re sending, it’s a scam; it’s a hoax. Everybody knows that. And the Democrats know it better than anybody else. ... So doing it before the election would be a very good thing because you’re going to probably see it.” — remarks Tuesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: There’s nothing fraudulent about mailin ballots, and Trump’s repeated false assertions certainly don’t provide a valid justification to speed up a judicial nomination.

First of all, there is no such thing as an “unsolicited” ballot. Five states routinely send ballots to all registered voters so they can choose to vote through the mail or in person. Four other states and the District of Columbia will be adopting that system in November, as will almost every county in Montana. Election officials note that, by registering to vote, people are effectively requesting a ballot, so itmakes no sense to call the materials sent to them “unsolicited.”