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horn

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  1. The Trump administration turned down more vaccine doses 'as recently as November,' former FDA commissioner says
    Jake Lahut | Mon, December 14, 2020, 11:50 PM GMT+8

    • The Trump administration once again rejected an offer from Pfizer for more COVID-19 vaccines "as recently as November," according to former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
    • "There were multiple conversations with the U.S. government about taking more supply in the second quarter," Gottlieb, who is a Pfizer board member, told CNBC on Monday.
    • This comes on the heels of the Trump administration reportedly rejecting 100 million doses of Pfizer's recently approved COVID-19 vaccine over the summer, according to The New York Times.

    Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump's former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CNBC on Monday that the Trump administration declined an offer from Pfizer for more doses of its COVID-19 vaccine "as recently as November."

    "There were multiple conversations with the U.S. government about taking more supply in the second quarter," said Gottlieb, who is a Pfizer board member. "The company wasn't taken up on the offer as recently as November."

    This news follows a New York Times report earlier this week that the White House in the summer rejected 100 million coronavirus vaccine doses developed by the pharmaceutical giant and BioNTech.

    The broader implications, according to Gottlieb, are that other countries will swoop in to claim the doses rejected by the US.

    "In the interim, other countries have put in orders for those supplies," he said. "I think they're going to work this out. I think hopefully we'll find a way to increase supply and be able to get the government what the government needs."

    Gottlieb also noted how dealing with the US government on the vaccine has been "challenging," even given Pfizer's status as an American company.

    "This is an American company, we want to work with the US government," he said. "But this has been a challenging process because there have been multiple conversations happening as recently as November, and now they're coming back and wanting to restart those conversations when other commitments have been made in the interim."

    The supply of COVID-19 vaccines should not be an issue in the short term, Gottlieb added.

    But by April of next year, supply of the Pfizer vaccine could run low stateside, he said.

    Still, Gottlieb said, "I think this will get worked out."

    businessinsider.com/trump-turned-down-covid-19-vaccine-doses-november-scott-gottlieb-2020-12

  2. Trump will 100% be next president, says Michael Flynn
    ‘There’s a whole number of paths that the President has’ says Flynn, insisting his former boss will remain in the White House
    Stuti Mishra | 22 hours ago

    michael-flynn.jpg?width=990

    Former national security adviser and ardent Trump supporter Michael Flynn has said that he still believes with absolute certainty that the Republican will remain in the White House come 20 January.

    Talking to Fox News on Sunday, Mr Flynn said Donald Trump still has multiple routes to a second term, citing various pending lawsuits by the Trump team. The Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the election, which Democrat Joe Biden won by 306 to 232 electoral college votes, have met with no success so far.

    “First of all, there’s a whole number of paths that the president has, and like I say, asked on a scale of one to 10 who’ll be the next president, I’d say 10, Donald Trump!” Mr Flynn said.

    Mr Flynn, who served as Mr Trump’s national security adviser briefly in 2017, is a retired three-star lieutenant-general of the US army. He was granted a presidential pardon by Mr Trump on 27 November after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI twice during the Russia probe.  

    Mr Flynn, who was open for his support of Mr Trump in the 2016 election as well, spoke for the first time about his hopes of Mr Trump’s presidency repeating in the “stop the steal” rally held by Trump supporters in Washington DC after the Supreme Court rejected a Texas suit seeking to subvert Mr Biden's victory.

    "The courts do not decide who the next president of the United States will be," Mr Flynn told a crowd of protesters. "We the people decide."

    "I will say, there are paths that are still in play ... there's a lot of activity that's still playing out."

    Mr Flynn also told the pro-Trump crowd on Saturday that he was certain that the president will hold onto power. "I will tell you one more time—because I've been asked—on a scale of one to 10, who will be the next president of the United States, and I say Donald Trump. Ten. A 10," he said.

    So far, the 50 lawsuits filed by Mr Trump with charges of rigging and fraud in the election have yielded no favourable results for his team, with many cases being withdrawn or rejected by the courts.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/michael-flynn-trump-president-b1773087.html

  3. Rudy Giuliani, hospitalized with the coronavirus, says he has 'exactly the same view' on COVID-19 :rolleyes:
    Catherine Garcia | Wed, December 9, 2020, 10:29 AM GMT+8

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    Speaking from his hospital room, Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday he hasn't changed his mind regarding the coronavirus or mask use, despite his recent COVID-19 diagnosis.

    Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer and a former mayor of New York City, was admitted to a Washington, D.C., hospital on Sunday, after traveling across the country in his futile attempt to overturn the election results. Giuliani did not wear a mask during meetings last week in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia, exposing lawmakers and others to the virus.

    During an interview with New York radio station 77 WABC, the hosts asked Giuliani if his views on the virus have changed, now that he is sick and in the hospital. They mentioned former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who contracted the virus after attending a super-spreader event at the White House; Christie later said it was "wrong" to be there without a mask.

    "No," Giuliani responded. "I have exactly the same view. You know, I've also been through cancer, a couple of other things — very serious, very serious, emergency knee operation. Things happen in life, and you have to go with them. You can't overreact to them. Otherwise, you let the fear of illness drive your entire life." Regarding face coverings, which provide protection to the wearer and those around them, Giuliani said he thinks "you can overdo the masks."

    Giuliani revealed that he has received two of the same medications Trump took during his hospitalization for COVID-19: remdesivir and dexamethasone. One of the radio hosts told Giuliani the drugs are "not something that the normal American is going to be able to get, because it's quite expensive." Giuliani deflected, saying he "didn't know that. I mean, they give it to us here at the hospital."

    Giuliani did admit that his high profile is why he's receiving treatment that the average American can't get, saying: "I think if it wasn't me, I wouldn't have been put in the hospital. Sometimes, when you're — you know, when you're a celebrity — they're worried if something happens to you, they're going to examine it more carefully, and they do everything right." He said his advice to people is "get early treatment," falsely claiming that "the earlier you get treated for this, No. 1, you totally eliminate the chance of dying."

    https://news.yahoo.com/rudy-giuliani-hospitalized-coronavirus-says-022900740.html

  4. JUST GIVE THE FUCK UP ALREADY YOU DESPERATE LOSER! :rolleyes: 

    17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit
    The move is an attempt to bolster a baseless legal effort by Texas that seeks to delay certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states that Mr. Trump lost.

    By Jeremy W. Peters and Maggie Haberman | Dec. 9, 2020

    Despite dozens of judges and courts rejecting challenges to the election, Republican attorneys general in 17 states on Wednesday backed President Trump in his increasingly desperate and audacious legal campaign to reverse the results.

    The show of support, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court, represented the latest attempt by Trump loyalists to use the power of public office to come to his aid as he continues to deny the reality of his loss with baseless claims of voter fraud.

    The move is an effort to bolster a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the pro-Trump attorney general in Texas that seeks to delay the certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states the president lost. Mr. Trump has been holding out hope that the Supreme Court will hear the case and ultimately award him a second term. Legal experts are skeptical, however, and have largely dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

    Late Tuesday, the president asked Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, if he would be willing to argue the case, according to a person familiar with their conversation. Mr. Cruz agreed, this person said. And the president has filed a motion with the court to intervene, which would make him a party to the case.

    The willingness of so many Republican politicians to publicly involve themselves in a legal campaign to invalidate the ballots of millions of Americans shows how singular a figure Mr. Trump remains in the G.O.P. That these political allies are also elected officials whose jobs involve enforcing laws, including voting rights, underscores the extraordinary nature of the brief to the court. Even in defeat — a reality that a significant number of Republicans refuse to accept, polls show — allegiance to Mr. Trump is viewed as the ticket to higher office.

    Mr. Cruz is only the latest possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024 to express support for Mr. Trump’s baseless allegations that the results of the election are tainted and fraudulent — a claim that the president’s lawyers have been unable yet to demonstrate in court. Indeed, in the president’s own motion in the Texas case his lawyer sidestepped the idea that fraud was rampant, writing that reporting in the media about the lack of proof “misses the point” because the larger issue is whether state officials loosened ballot safeguards “so that fraud becomes undetectable.”

    Another Republican senator with presidential ambition, Josh Hawley of Missouri, praised the attorney general of his state on Wednesday, Eric Schmitt, after Mr. Schmitt declared on Twitter that “Missouri is in the fight” for Mr. Trump. “Good work,” Mr. Hawley wrote in response. Mr. Schmitt’s office took the lead state on the brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of the other 16 states on Wednesday, which argued that “serious concerns relating to election integrity and public confidence in elections” have surfaced.

    Republicans familiar with the dynamics in these states — all of which Mr. Trump won — described calculations of ambition and political survival that many party officials are making as they choose to stand behind Mr. Trump. Some fear that if they don’t make it clear they are on the president’s side they could open themselves up to a primary challenge or end any hope for attaining higher office in the near future. Some like Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who filed the lawsuit, are considering a run for governor.

    Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to pressure Republican state legislators and elections officials — who have the most influence over declaring the formal winner and allocating electoral votes — to deny victory to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. They have largely resisted him. But in a sign of how Mr. Trump continues to interfere with the process, he is hosting several Republican state attorneys general at the White House on Thursday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the plans.

    Mr. Paxton’s suit claims that voting irregularities in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should be investigated by the state legislatures before those states formally certify Mr. Biden the winner on Monday.

    After Mr. Paxton filed, Republican attorneys general from across the country rushed to declare themselves on board, posting their support on social media and issuing statements that echoed the legally questionable claim in the Texas brief that its citizens are harmed if elections in other states are not conducted properly.

    The 17 states behind the amicus brief represent a majority of the 25 Republican attorneys general across the country, and include Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana and South Dakota. Notably, the two Republican attorneys general in the battleground states that Mr. Trump lost — Arizona and Georgia — are not part of the brief.

    Legal experts and a handful of Republican elected officials have questioned the seriousness of the suit, pointing out that states like Texas have no standing to bring a case involving how another state awards its electoral votes.

    Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and former attorney general of the state, seemed baffled by the legal maneuver, calling it “extraordinary” and “unprecedented.”

    “I’ve never seen something like this, so I don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do,” he said in Washington on Wednesday.

    And in Georgia, the office of the Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, quickly pushed back against Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit after it was filed. It issued a statement saying that Mr. Paxton was “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/trump-texas-supreme-court-lawsuit.html

  5. Russian ice cream in 'gay propaganda' row
    BBC | Published7 July

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    A Russian ice cream maker has been accused of promoting homosexuality after using a rainbow on its packaging.

    The head of Russia's official Union of Women said the image amounted to "propaganda" for gay and lesbian relations in a video conference with President Vladimir Putin.

    Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993, but those deemed to be promoting "homosexual behaviour among minors" face fines of up to 500,000 roubles ($7,000).

    "They're quietly promoting these nice rainbow colours, using nice words, they're advertising an ice cream called Rainbow," Yekaterina Lakhova, who is also a former MP, told the Russian president.

    This, Ms Lakhova added, could potentially make Russian children more accepting of the rainbow flag used by the LGBTQ community.

    She also urged Mr Putin to defend what are known among conservatives in Russia as "traditional values".

    They include the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, which is to be enshrined in the Russian Constitution following a recent public vote that also paves the way for Vladimir Putin to seek two more terms of office.

    In a later interview, Ms Lakhova said: "I don't like the rainbow, just as I don't like the swastika."

    LGBT 'propaganda'
    In response to Ms Lakhova, President Putin said: "If there are reasons to believe that this is propaganda for values that are not traditional to us, then… it must be managed by society, but not aggressively."

    He added that he had no objections to homosexuality, only to its "propaganda".

    At the same meeting, President Putin criticised the US embassy in Moscow for displaying the rainbow flag recently, saying that the symbol said "something about those who work there".

    Homophobia is rife in Russia and, after the flag was displayed, conservative activists placed a similar one on the pavement outside the US embassy for passers-by to wipe their feet on.

    The authorities in Russia have been accused of tolerating anti-gay abuse, and there have been allegations of particularly cruel purges in the North Caucasus region of Chechnya.

    Rainbow 'not a flag'
    The ice-cream maker embroiled in the row said the rainbow on its packaging had nothing to do with LGBT rights.

    "Our company advocates traditional family relations, and categorically disagrees with Ms Lakhova. We believe that the rainbow is sunlight after the rain, not the LGBT flag," said Armen Beniaminov, who is vice-president of Chistaya Liniya.

    "As the father of a large family, I openly voted for the constitutional amendments specifically because one of them defends the traditional values," he told official news agency RIA Novosti.

    Ms Lakhova's claims that ice cream is being used to promote homosexuality has caused an uproar on Russian media.

    The popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets sarcastically suggested that the rainbow must now be banned from appearing after it rains in Russia, and that the Defence Ministry may be drafted in to fight any rogue rainbows. "Otherwise children will see them!" the paper warned.

    A popular Twitter user jokingly demanded that light dispersion be banned in Russia because "it puts homosexual innuendo into normal sunlight".

    Journalist Andrei Loshak took a much more serious view of the situation, accusing Putin of trying to use homophobia "as an effective populist tool".

    "Someone tell him that times have changed" and Russians are more accepting of gay rights, Mr Loshak wrote on Facebook.

    Opinion polls have shown improving attitudes to LGBT rights in Russia. A poll in 2019 suggested that 47% of Russians supported equal rights for gay and lesbian people, with 43% against.

    Reporting by Vitaly Shevchenko

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/07/russian-president-urged-to-ban-secret-gay-propaganda-rainbow-icecream.html

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