Trump Administration actively sought to spread COVID-19 infection as late as June 2020 in order to achieve "herd immunity"

"Consistent with a “herd immunity” approach, the evidence obtained by the Select Subcommittee shows that Dr. Alexander privately acknowledged to other appointees that “[w]e always knew” that “cases will rise” as a result of the Administration’s policies. Yet even as he advocated for letting the coronavirus spread widely, Dr. Alexander also attempted to pass blame for the Administration’s failure to contain the virus to career scientists and public health officials. He also urged colleagues to suppress scientific information about the risk posed by the virus to minority communities that he admitted was “very accurate” out of concern that it would be “use[d] against the president.....Documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee show that top Trump Administration officials repeatedly communicated about pursuing a dangerous herd immunity strategy as far back as June 2020, despite public denials that the Administration was adopting this approach.” [U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on the Corona Virus Crisis, Memorandum dated 16 December 2020]

On the morning of the day this article was published the number of COVID-19 deaths in the USA had reached 305,268 men, women and children, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at John Hopkins University.

Bloomberg, 17 December 2020: 

A Trump administration official sought to speed the spread of the coronavirus among children and young adults in order to achieve “herd immunity,” according to documents released by a top House Democrat. 

Paul Alexander, a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Humans Services, repeatedly encouraged adoption of a policy to increase the number of virus infections among younger Americans, saying they have “zero to low risk,” according to documents released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. 

In one email message, Alexander said “Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc” should be used “to develop herd…we want them infected,” according to the documents released Wednesday. 

“Achieving herd immunity before a vaccine is widely available — which requires a very large portion of the population to get infected with the coronavirus — has been widely rejected by scientists as a dangerous approach that would lead to the deaths of several hundred thousand Americans at a minimum,” Representative James Clyburn, chairman of the panel, said in the memo to members of the committee.....

In a series of messages during the summer, Alexander continued to make the case to other officials to open up college campuses and businesses to increase the spread among the young and relatively healthy, while maintaining distancing measures for the elderly. 

“The issue is who cares? If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares,” Alexander said in a July message. “As long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life….who cares if we test more and get more positive tests.”

Trump knew how dangerous the COVID-19 pandemic was in January 2020 and did nothing to stop the spread throughout America

In a series of interviews with Bob Woodward, US President Donald Trump revealed that he had a level of detail about the threat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus earlier than previously known.

CNN published part of these taped interviews on 9 September 2020.

7 FEBRUARY 2020 – no COVID-19 deaths in USA

TRUMP: “We've got a little bit of an interesting setback with the virus going in China.”......

WOODWARD: “And so, what was President Xi saying yesterday?”

TRUMP: “Oh, we were talking mostly about the uh, the virus. And I think he’s going to have it in good shape, but you know, it’s a very tricky situation. It’s –“

WOODWARD: “Indeed it is.”

TRUMP: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed.

And so, that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your – you know, your, even your strenuous flus. You know, people don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?”

WOODWARD: “I know. It’s much forgotten.”

TRUMP: “Pretty amazing. And then I say, well, is that the same thing-”

WOODWARD: “What are you able to do for –“

TRUMP: “This is more deadly. This is five per- you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know? So, this is deadly stuff.”

19 March 2020 – 52 COVID-19 deaths in USA

TRUMP: “Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old- older.”

WOODWARD: “Yeah, exactly.”

TRUMP: “Young people too, plenty of young people.”

WOODWARD: “So, give me-”

TRUMP: “So what’s going on-

WOODWARD: “-a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci or somebody who kind of, it caused a pivot in your mind. Because it’s clear, just from what’s on the public record that you went through a pivot on this to, ‘oh my god, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.’”

TRUMP: “Well I think, Bob, really, to be honest with you-”

WOODWARD: “Sure, I want you to be.”

TRUMP: “I wanted to- I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

May 2020 – by 1 May there were 1,795 COVID-19 deaths in USA

WOODWARD: “So now, I understand-”

TRUMP: “-it was too early.”

WOODWARD: “Your new national security adviser, O’Brien, said to you January 28, “Mr. President, this is going- this virus is going to be the biggest national security threat to your presidency.” Do you remember that?”

TRUMP: “No, no. No, I don’t. No, I don’t. I’m sure if he said it – you know, I’m sure he said it. Nice guy.”

By 9 September 2020 the number who had died from COVID-19 infection in the USA exceeded 170,000 people, according to a Reuters report and “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had forecast last month that the U.S. death toll will reach 200,000 to 211,000 by Sept. 26” while “The University of Washington’s health institute last week forecasted that the U.S. deaths from the coronavirus will reach 410,000 by the end of the year.”

Throughout 2020 Donald Trump continues to hold large public "Keep America Great" rallies without social distancing or face masks being required. 

On 20 March 2020 Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was quoted as saying that "The country which has actually been responsible for a large amount of these (coronavirus cases) [in Australia] has actually been the United States". However in March he was still refusing to ban travel from the U.S. to Australia.

By 20 March Australia had 846 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 41.7% of these occurring in New South Wales. 

In April 2020 Morrison chose to focus on economic recovery when he discussed the global pandemic with Donald Trump - rather than the impact in Australia of infections arriving from the U.S.

Since then community infection has taken hold in Australia and at least 788 people have died to date.

As late as July 2020 airline passengers carrying the COVID-19 infection were arriving in New South Wales from the United States. With the pandemic clearly out of control out of control in America passenger flights from the U.S. to Sydney still continue to arrive.

Quote of the Week

'“Yeah, it is quantitatively if you look at it, it is. I mean the numbers don’t lie,” Fauci said when asked during an interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta whether the U.S. had the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak. The U.S., which accounts for less than 5% of the world population, leads all other countries in global coronavirus infections and deaths.'  [Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, quoted by CNBC on 5 August 2020]

“a woman who had told NSW Police at the Victorian border she would be self-isolating at Nimbin on the NSW North Coast was issued a $1000 fine after she was located 470 kilometres south in a vehicle at Nabiac. She was also directed to return to Victoria.” [WAtoday , 7 August 2020]

On blaming the wrong people for an election result.....

https://youtu.be/6I_ZhGHxnHQ

USA 2019: crazy continues to be the order of the day

SPIN, 2 January 2019:

CREDIT: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

 President Trump delivered a harsh post-holiday awakening at his first cabinet meeting of 2019, holding forth for a nearly two-hour freestyle press conference in the presence of reporters.

In what amounted to a barely coherent filibuster, Trump dragged his former secretary of defense, chalked recent stock market turbulence up to a “glitch,”gave a shoutout to Kanye West, and mused that he might have made a good general himself. Most of the time, he sounded like a guy at a bus station arguing with pigeons. Behind him, ex-Fox News exec turned head of the White House press shop Bill Shine shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

In spite of his best efforts, Trump was nearly upstaged by a parody poster of himself as a Game of Thrones character with the text “Sanctions are coming.” The president initially shared the parody image on his Twitter feed in November, apparently signaling his intention to impose sanctions on Iran. On Wednesday afternoon, an actual, physical, movie-theater-sized version of the poster was laid out on the table in front of the president facing the press pool.

When the image first appeared in November, HBO issued a statement that they would “prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes.” An HBO rep told Spin the network has no additional comment.

Trump didn’t address why the poster was so prominently positioned, but he did extol the virtues of a Southern border wall while posing with appropriated imagery from a dragon soap opera that vehemently undermines that premise. “Walls work,” he told reporters. Trump is currently holding out for wall funding amid an ongoing government shutdown, leaving some 800,000 federal employees currently without pay.

TRUMP: "I had a meeting at the Pentagon with lots of generals. They were like from a movie. Better looking than Tom Cruise, & stronger. And I had more generals than I've ever seen, & we were at the bottom of this incredible room. I said, 'this is greatest room I've ever seen.'" pic.twitter.com/fTpgDXVso8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

'Too Dumb To Know That They Are Dumb': an unexpected explanation of why political extremism in Western democracies is as it is.....

A possible explanation for the continuing presence on the Australian political stage of Pauline Hanson, David  Leyonhjelm, Tim Wilson, Darren Hinch, Ian Macdonald, Barnaby Joyce, Michaelia Cash, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Christian Porter, Julie Bishop, Josh Frydenberg, Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Malcolm Turnbull - Rupert Murdoch suffers from the Dunning‐Kruger effect and has infected much of the mainstream media.

Ian G. Anson, Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning‐Kruger Effect, April 2018:

A widely cited finding in social psychology holds that individuals with low levels of competence will judge themselves to be higher achieving than they really are. In the present study, I examine how the so‐called “Dunning‐Kruger effect” conditions citizens' perceptions of political knowledgeability. While low performers on a political knowledge task are expected to engage in overconfident self‐placement and self‐assessment when reflecting on their performance, I also expect the increased salience of partisan identities to exacerbate this phenomenon due to the effects of directional motivated reasoning. Survey experimental results confirm the Dunning‐Kruger effect in the realm of political knowledge. They also show that individuals with moderately low political expertise rate themselves as increasingly politically knowledgeable when partisan identities are made salient. This below‐average group is also likely to rely on partisan source cues to evaluate the political knowledge of peers. In a concluding section, I comment on the meaning of these findings for contemporary debates about rational ignorance, motivated reasoning, and political polarization.

PsyPost, 16 April 2018:

For his study, Anson examined 2,606 American adults using two online surveys.

He evaluated the knowledge of the participants by quizzing them regarding the number of years served by a senator, the name of the current Secretary of Energy, the party with more conservative positions regarding health care, the political party currently in control of the House of Representatives, and which of four programs the U.S. federal government spends the least on.

Most of the participants performed poorly on the political quiz — and those who performed worse were more likely to overestimate their performance.

“Many Americans appear to be extremely overconfident in their political knowledgeability, because they have no way of knowing how little they actually know about the world of politics (this is the so-called ‘double bind of incompetence’). But there’s a catch: when Republicans and Democrats engage in partisan thought processes, this effect becomes even stronger than before,” Anson explained.

“Partisans with modest factual knowledge about politics become even more convinced that they are savvier than average when they reflect on a world full of members of the opposite party. In fact, when I asked partisans to ‘grade’ political knowledge quizzes filled out by fictional members of the other party, low-skilled respondents gave out scores that reflected party biases much more than actual knowledge.”

“The results seem to indicate the existence of a widespread failure of political discourse in the United States: when a partisan talks to someone of the out-party, they are pretty likely to misjudge the political knowledgeability of themselves and their conversation partner. More often than not, this means that partisans will think of themselves as far more politically knowledgeable than an out-partisan, even when that person is extremely politically knowledgeable,” Anson told PsyPost.

“I think this has major implications for the breakdowns in political discourse we often observe in contemporary American democracy.”

Wearing your dark heart on your car and gun

Trump starts the New Year with the United Nation's thumbing its nose at his threats

Despite US President Donald Trump’s threats to pull foreign aid from countries which didn’t vote as he directed, seventy-four per cent of national representatives participating in the UN General Assembly  Emergency Session ‘Status of Jerusalem’ vote cast their ballots against the Trump Regime’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

United Nations News Centre, 21 December 2017:

General Assembly demands all States comply with UN resolutions regarding status of Jerusalem

Panels in the General Assembly Hall showing the final count for the resolution on ‘the status of Jerusalem, during the resumed 10th Emergency Special Session on Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. UN Photo/Manuel Elias

21 December 2017 – By an overwhelming majority, Member States in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday “demanded” that all countries comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the status of Jerusalem, following an earlier decision by the United States to recognize the Holy City as the capital of Israel.

Through a resolution adopted by a recorded vote of 128 in favour to nine against (Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo, United States), with 35 abstentions, the 193-member Assembly expressed “deep regret” over recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem and stressed that the Holy City “is a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant UN resolutions.”

Action in the Assembly today follows a failed attempt by the Security Council on Monday adopt a similar text reflecting regret among the body’s members about “recent decisions regarding the status of Jerusalem,” with a veto from the United States, a permanent member of the Council.

Ahead of that failed resolution, Nickolay Mladenov, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Security Council that the security situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory had become more tense in the wake of US President Donald Trump's decision on 6 December to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Subsequently, Yemen and Turkey, in their respective capacities as Chair of the Arab Group and the Chair of the Summit of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, requested the President of the General Assembly to “urgently resume’ the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly in accordance with the so-named ‘Uniting for peace’ procedure.

This procedure, under Assembly resolution 377 (1950), is a pathway around a Security Council veto. By it, the Assembly can call an emergency special session to consider a matter “with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures,” if the Security Council fails to act or if there is lack of unanimity among the Council’s permanent members, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Since the tenth such meeting, the Assembly has temporarily adjourned the emergency special session and authorized “the President of the General Assembly […] to resume its meeting upon request from Member States,” allowing for speedy consideration by the body of urgent issues.

The most recent resumed emergency session was in 2009 when the Assembly called a meeting on East Jerusalem and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Resolutions in the Assembly are non-binding and do not carry the force of international law as do measures agreed in the Security Council.

Find out more about the Assembly’s emergency special sessions and resolution 377 (1950) here

Today’s resolution demanded that “all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.”

The General Assembly further affirmed that “any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council.”

In that regard the Assembly also called upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem, pursuant to Security Council resolution 478 adopted in 1980.

Reiterating its call for the reversal of the negative trends that endanger the two-State solution, the Assembly urged greater international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

The text of the ‘Status of Jerusalem’ resolution include the undertaking; to ask nations not to establish diplomatic missions in the historic city of Jerusalem, as delegates warned that the recent decision by the United States to do so risked igniting a religious war across the already turbulent Middle East and even beyond.

SEIN KAMPF: how many in Germany see Donald John Trump post-Charlottesville

“HIS STRUGGLE

Neonazis, Klu-Klux-Klan,

Racism:

How Donald Trump fuelled hatred in America”

[Stern news magazine, 23 August 2017]

Lofgren introduces resolution urging Vice President and Cabinet to fulfil duties under 25th Amendment

It was only a matter of time......

“Amendment XXV

Section 4.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.” [Cornel Law School, U.S. Constitution]

Democratic Party Representative Zoe Lofgren’s (D-Calif.), Press Release, 18 August 2017:

                                                                                                                                     

Lofgren introduces resolution urging Vice President and Cabinet to fulfill duties under 25th Amendment

Resolution cites President Trump’s “alarming pattern of speech causing concern that a mental disorder may have rendered him unfit”

Washington, August 18, 2017 

WASHINGTON, DC – Does the President suffer from early stage dementia? Has the stress of office aggravated a mental illness crippling impulse control? Has emotional disorder so impaired the President that he is unable to discharge his duties? Is the President mentally and emotionally stable?

Today, U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution that urges the Vice President and Cabinet to have the President examined by medical and psychiatric professionals to assist them in determining whether the President is unfit and unable to fulfill his Constitutional duties. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution outlines this obligation.

As the resolution reads, “President Donald J. Trump has exhibited an alarming pattern of behavior and speech causing concern that a mental disorder may have rendered him unfit and unable to fulfill his Constitutional duties.

“Many Americans, including many Republicans, have observed the President's increasingly disturbing pattern of actions and public statements that suggest he may be mentally unfit to execute the duties required of him,” said Lofgren. “The President has not released a serious medical evaluation. Just as would be the case if the President were physically unable to execute the office of the President, this resolution urges those entrusted with the responsibility enshrined in the 25th Amendment to employ the services of medical and psychiatric professionals to help in their determination whether the President is mentally capable of carrying out his Constitutional responsibilities.”

Lofgren’s resolution urges the Vice President and Cabinet to “quickly secure the services of medical and psychiatric professionals to examine the President… to determine whether the President suffers from mental disorder or other injury that impairs his abilities and prevents him from discharging his constitutional duties.” 

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment states:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

A full copy of the resolution can be found here.

# # #

Who's Who in Charlottesville "Unite The Right" Rally litigation

Eighteen far right groups and every single person who marched as part of the “Unite The Right” Rally on 11-12 August 2017 is being sued by two female Charlottesville residents injured when a car allegedly driven by a rally participant crashed into the back of their car.

This driver, James Alex Fields Jr., was charged with second degree murder, malicious wounding and hit and run by Charlottesville police on 12 August 2017.

Unite The Right Rally Lawsuit: Tadrint Washington and Micah Washington v James Alex Fields Jr. et al by clarencegirl on Scribd

This may not be the last lawsuit in relation to this violent white supremacist rally.

The Charlottesville incidents to which US President Donald J. Trump gives tacit support - WARNING: violent and disturbing images

https://youtu.be/P54sP0Nlngg

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August 2017:

He [President Trump] argued that both sides had been guilty of violence, he noted that the white supremacists indeed had a permit to protest, but the "other group" did not. He insisted that both sides had "bad people" and "very fine people" and he drew an equivalency between George Washington, who help create the United States after the American Revolutionary War that ended in 1783, and General Robert E. Lee, who led the secessionist armies that killed more American troops than any other foe in the defence of slavery nearly a century later.

The political and media response afterwards was immediate and shocked. Again Republican leaders were forced to come out to rebuke and distance themselves from their ostensible leader. In a long Twitter statement Marco Rubio declared, "Mr President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suspect that the reaction to "Unite The Right Rally" marches in Charlottesville is not what Neo-Nazi, Klu Klux Klan and other hate groups were expecting

From 11 to 12 August 2017 extreme right wing groups gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia USA to participate in a two-day rally. Counter protesters also gathered over that same time period.

By the evening of 12 August two police officers and one counter protester were dead and at least twenty counter protesters were wounded.

Unite The Right march participant……

"We are stepping off the Internet in a big way. For instance last night at the Torch Log there were hundreds and hundreds of us. People realised they are not atomised individuals, they are part of a larger whole. Because we have been spreading our memes, we have been organising on the Internet and now they are coming out and now as you can see today we greatly outnumbered the anti-white, anti-American filth and at some point we will have enough power that we will clear them from the streets forever. That which is degenerate in white countries will be removed. We are starting to slowly unveil a little bit of our power level – you ain't seen nothin yet." [Robert "Azzmador" Ray, feature writer at The Daily Stormer, video, 12 August 2017]

Reaction to the white supremacist violence……

The white supremacist who helped lead the Charlottesville rally has been banned from Facebook

Facebook has banned the Facebook and Instagram accounts of a white nationalist who attended the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in deadly violence.

Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told the Associated Press on Wednesday that the profile pages of Christopher Cantwell have been removed as well as a page connected to his podcast..

The Daily Caller Removes 'Unite the Right' Organizer Jason Kessler's Bylines From Web Site

As of 14 August 2017, Daily Caller —  a conservative web site with a twin nonprofit organization — has scrubbed its site of articles by Jason Kessler, the white supremacist who was an organizer of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia the weekend before. 

Daily Stormer jumps to dark web while Reddit and Facebook ban hate groups

GoDaddy – the internet domain registrar and web hosting service – and Google cancelled the Daily Stormer's domain name registration on Sunday, saying they prohibit clients from using their sites to incite violence. The Daily Stormer helped organise the violent neo-Nazi gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday at which a civil rights activist died.

Twitter is joining its fellow tech companies in clamping down on the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website

On Twitter, the Daily Stormer's feed is no longer visible; instead, the page on Wednesday afternoon reflects its account has been "suspended." A spokesperson for Twitter said the company could not comment on individual users, but added: "The Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies."

Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

Earlier today, Cloudflare terminated the account of the Daily Stormer. We've stopped proxying their traffic and stopped answering DNS requests for their sites. We've taken measures to ensure that they cannot sign up for Cloudflare's services ever again.

US companies crack down on key services for hate groups

US companies are blocking hate groups from key services such as payments, cyber security defences and social media sites after the violence in Charlottesville, despite questions over the consequences for freedom of speech. Leading payment and credit card groups MasterCard, American Express, Discover Financial Services and Visa have joined Silicon Valley companies Twitter and Cloudflare to become the latest corporations to try to block neo-Nazis' access to funds and the internet. Several of the payments companies added they did not ban the use of their services because the customers expressed offensive views — but because they violated their terms of service or incited violence.

Trump Dissolves Business Advisory Councils as CEOs Quit

Most leaders on the councils thought Trump's statement on Monday, in which he condemned the hate groups by name, was sufficient. But they were furious and disgusted with Trump's follow-up remarks on Tuesday, according to the offices of two CEOs.

By Tuesday night, at least nine members decided to drop out individually, and reached out to Schwarzman, who then proposed dismantling the council entirely.

A dozen members of that strategy and policy council participated in a conference call Wednesday, during which they all agreed to dissolve the group, the people close to the decision said. Schwarzman then notified the White House. And after that, Trump tweeted that he was "ending both" advisory councils. The business leaders had expected that Trump would portray the developments as his own decision, the sources said

Matt Talhelm‏ @MattTalhelm

#BREAKING: #Cville car suspect, #UniteTheRight rally organizer, & alt-right leaders face $3M lawsuit from 2 ppl injured in car attack

RELATED POST

North Coast Voices, The United States of America under Trump - the ugly picture. Part Two

The United States of America under Trump - the ugly picture. Part Two

The Time

The 203^rd to 206^th day of the Trump Regime

The Place

Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

The Events

White supremacists rallies with unarmed counter protesters on the sidelines

The Images

Donald Trump does not dare name the white supremacists in #Charlottesville today. But they name him: "Heil Trump!" pic.twitter.com/sFzlvwtwBg

— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) August 12, 2017

America, you're drunk.#Charlottesville #trumppic.twitter.com/vn7JW1XXBz

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) August 12, 2017

Charlottesville, Virginia (CNN) One person was killed and 19 were hurt when a speeding car slammed into a throng of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, where a "Unite the Right" rally of white nationalist and other right-wing groups had been scheduled take place, the city tweeted on its verified account.

Part One - The United States of America under Trump - the ugly picture in two tweets

Note: All images found on Twitter