The one discussion bulls chose to ignore while equity markets soar to new highs is the permanent economic damage story due to months of coronavirus lockdowns.
A hot humid day, but a gentle, warm breeze is blowing. The smoke and tear gas swirl gently to and fro, hanging in the dense, sweaty air, as shafts of dazzling sunlight scythe through the smokiness at sharp angles. A mass protest is forming. Youths are chattering; people moving aimlessly.
A hot humid day, but a gentle, warm breeze is blowing. The smoke and tear gas swirl gently to and fro, hanging in the dense, sweaty air, as shafts of dazzling sunlight scythe through the smokiness at sharp angles. A mass protest is forming. Youths are chattering; people moving aimlessly. It still has not solidified into purpose, yet the raw tenseness of the coming conflict hangs, as palpably as does the smoke in the air. It is evident – there will be violence today.
No, this is not America. This is the flashpoint crossroad between the radical Jewish settler outpost of Beit El in the West Bank, and its interface with the Palestinian town of Ramallah. Between the two, the Israeli army are ranged, awaiting the hostilities to commence. This was back, during the Second Palestinian Intifada; it was a time of near war, and I was present, charged with observing this, and other unfolding confrontations, on behalf of the EU.
As usual, I head to the back of the sprawling mob, for it is only from this perspective that one can understand the nature of events. You observe the silent organization in action. Young men smoothly and unobtrusively, position the piles of stones that later would be hurled (mostly ineffectually) at the soldiers who are stood just beyond the range of stone-throwers. Then the protest managers are gone – vanished.
I know what is about to unfold. I have just seen two snipers (in this instance, Palestinians), slip into position, well-back, concealed on a hillside over-looking the crossroads. It is a sad sight – the young people massing before me are not dangerous; they generally are decent, sincere young people, angry at the expanding settler-occupation, and hyped by the ‘animators’ sent amongst the crowd to stoke emotions. They are not bad young people.
I am sad, because some, I know, will soon be dead, their families mourning a child’s loss tonight. But they are the fodder – innocent fodder – and this is war. At the height of confrontation, the snipers begin. Just a couple of rounds, but enough; they fire with silenced weapons. The Israelis soldiers cannot tell (unlike me), the source of the firing. A number of Palestinian youth fall dead; the mood incandescent. Purpose achieved.
Why do I write about these twenty-year old events? Because I know well the patterns. I have seen them often. It is a playbook widely used. And I see familiar tell-tales emerging in the videos posted on the current protests in America.
Most notable, are the ubiquitous palettes of bricks that mysteriously appear in the background to many videos of the protests (see here for a typical selection). Who is positioning them? Who is paying? U.S. commentator, Michael Snyder, too has noted the “complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were, and where police were not, for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to… where they thought officers would not be.”
He observes too, the anticipatory raising of bail money; the preparing of medical teams, ready to treat injuries; and of caches of flammable materials (suitable for torching official vehicles), pre-positioned in places where protests would later occur. All this – with simultaneous protests in more than 380 U.S. cities – in my experience, signals much bigger, silent backstage organization. And behind ‘the organisation’, the instigators lie, far back: maybe even thousands of miles back; and somewhere out there will be the financier.
However, in the U.S., commentators say they see no leadership; the protests are amorphous. That is not unusual to see no leadership – a ‘leadership’ appears only if negotiations are sought and planned; otherwise key actors are to be protected from arrest. The most telling sign of a backstage organisation is that on one day, it is ‘full on’, and the next all is quiet – as if a switch has been pulled. It often has.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of protestors in the U.S. this last week, were – and are – decent sincere Americans, outraged at George Floyd’s killing and continuing social and institutional racism. Was this then, an Antifa and anarchist operation, as the White House contends? I doubt it – any more than those Palestinian youth in Beit El constituted anything other than fodder for the front of stage. We simply don’t know the backstage. Keep an open mind.
Tom Luongo presciently suggests that should we wish to understand better the context to these recent events – and not be stuck at stage appearances – we need to look to Hong Kong for indicators.
Writing in October 2019, Luongo noted that: “What started as peaceful protests against an extradition law and worry over reunification with China has morphed into an ugly and vicious assault on the city’s economic future. [This is] being perpetrated by the so-called “Block Bloc”, roving bands of mask-wearing, police-tactic defying vandals attacking randomly around the city to disrupt people going to work”.
An exasperated local man exclaims: “Not only you [i.e. Block Bloc protestors are] harming the people making their living in businesses, companies, shopping malls. You’re destroying subway stations. You’re destroying our streets. You’re destroying our hard-earned reputation as a safe, international business centre. You’re destroying our economy”. The man cannot explain why there was not a single police officer in sight, for hours, as the rampage continued.
What is going on? Luongo quotes a September Bloomberg interview with HK tycoon, Jimmy Lai, billionaire publisher of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) scourge, the Apple Daily, and the highly visible interlocutor of official Washington notables, such as Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. In it, Lai pronounced himself convinced that if protests in HK turned violent, China would have no choice but to send the People’s Armed Police units from Shenzen into Hong Kong to put down unrest: “That,” Lai said on Bloomberg TV, “will be a repeat of the Tiananmen Square massacre; and that will bring in the whole world against China … Hong Kong will be done, and … China will be done, too”.
In brief, Lai proposes to ‘burn’ Hong Kong – to ‘save’ Hong Kong. That is, ‘burn it to save it’ from the CCP – to keep its residue in the ‘Anglo-sphere’.
“Jimmy Lai”, Luongo writes, “is telling you what the strategy is here. The goal is to thoroughly undermine China’s standing on the world stage and raise that of the U.S. This is economic warfare, it’s a hybrid war tactic. And the soldiers are radicalized kids in uniforms bonking old men on the heads with sticks and taunting cops. Sound familiar? Because that’s what’s going on in places like Portland, Oregon with Antifa … And that cause is chaos”. (Recall, Luongo wrote this more than six months ago).
Well, here we are today: Steve Bannon, closely allied with what he, himself, terms the U.S.’ China super-hawks, and allied with yet another Chinese billionaire financier, Guo Wengui (a fugitive from the Chinese Authorities, and member at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club), is pursuing an incandescent campaign of denigration and vitriol against the Chinese Communist Party – intended, like Lai’s campaign, to destroy utterly China’s global standing.
Here it is again – the tightly-knit band of U.S. and exile super-hawks want to ‘burn’ down the CCP, to ‘save’ what? To save the ‘Empire Waning’ (America), through ‘burning’ the ‘Empire Rising’ (China). Bannon (at least, and to his credit), is explicit about the risk: A failure to prevail in this this info-war mounted against the CCP, he says, will end in “kinetic war”.
So, back to the U.S. protests, and drawing on Luongo’s insights from Hong Kong – I wrote last week that Trump sees himself fighting a hidden global ‘war’ to retain America’s present dominance over global money (the dollar) – now America’s principal source of external power. For America to lose this struggle to a putative multi-lateral cosmopolitan governance – Trump perceives – would result in the whole, white Anglo-sphere’s ejection from control over the global financial system – and its associated political privilege. It would entail control of the global financial and political system slipping away to an amorphous multi-lateral financial governance, operated by an international institution, or some global Central Bank. Since before WW1, control of global financial governance has been in the hands of the Anglo-American nexus running between London and New York. It still does, just about – albeit that today’s Wall Street elite is cosmopolitan, rather than Anglo, yet still it is firmly anchored to Washington, via the Fed and the U.S. Treasury. For this to slip would be the ‘end of Empire’.
To maintain the status of the dollar, Trump therefore has assiduously devoted himself to disrupting the multi-lateral global order, sensing this danger to the unique privileges conveyed by control of the world’s monetary base. His particular concern would be to see a Europe that was umbilically-linked to the financial and technological heavy-weight that is China. This, in itself, effectively would presage a different world financial governance.
But, is the fear that the threat principally lies with Europe’s Soros-style vision justified? There may – just as well – be a fifth-column at home. The billionaires’ club of the very rich has long ceased to be culturally ‘Anglo’. It has become a borderless, ‘self-selecting’, governing entity unto itself.
Perhaps an earlier ‘end of Époque’ metamorphosis shows us how readily an old-established elite can swap horses in order to survive. In the historical Sicilian novel, The Leopard, Prince Salina’s nephew tells his uncle that the old order is ‘done’, and with it, the family is ‘done’ too, unless … “Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”.
It is clear that some billionaire oligarchs – whether American or not – can see the ‘writing on the wall’: A financial crisis is coming. And so, too, is a social one. A recent survey done by one such member, showed that 55% of American millennials supported the end to the capitalist system. Perhaps the brotherhood of billionaires is thinking that ‘unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist socialism on us’. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. The recent disorder in the U.S. will have unnerved them further.
The push towards radical change – towards that global financial, political and ecological governance that threatens dollar hegemony – paradoxically may emerge from within: from within America’s own financial elite. ‘Burning’ the dollar’s privileged global status may become seen as the price for things to stay as they are — and for the elite to be saved. The future of Empire hangs on this issue: Can US dollar hegemony be preserved, or might the financial ‘nobility’ see that things must change – if they are to stay as they are? That is, the Revolution may come from within — and not necessarily from abroad.
In recent days, Trump has pivoted to being the President of ‘Law and Order’ – a shift which he explicitly connected to 1968, when, in response to protests in Minneapolis after the police suffocation last week of George Floyd, Trump tweeted: “When the looting begins, the shooting starts”. These were the words used by Governor George Wallace, the segregationist third-party candidate, in the 1968 Presidential election: Republicans launched their “southern strategy” to win over resentful white Democrats after the civil rights revolution.
Trump is determined to prevail – but today is not 1968. Can a Law and Order platform work now? U.S. demography in the south has shifted, and it is not clear that the liberal, urban electorates of America would sign up to a law-and-order platform, which implicitly appeals to white anxieties?
In a sense, President Trump finds himself between a rock and a hard place. If the protests are not quelled, and “the right normal (not) restored” (as per Esper’s words), Trump may lose those remaining ‘law and order’ conservatives. But, were he to lose control and over-react using the military, then it may be Trump who has his own ‘Tiananmen Square’ – one, which Jimmy Lai (gleefully) predicted in Hong Kong’s case would bring in the whole world against China: “Hong Kong will be done, and … China will be done, too.”
Or, in this instance, Trump might be done, and… the U.S. too.
Via Off-Guardian.org, A new study has found that Sars-Cov-2, the virus linked to Covid19, maybe five times more widespread than previously thought, and therefore five times less deadly.
As a reminder, what happened in late January was confusing. Shortly after we asked if "This [Is] The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic", referring to Wuhan Institute Of Virology scientist Peng Zhou (who three months later was being investigated by western spy agencies for his role in creating Covid) and some low-grade "reporter" from Buzzfeed decided to report us to Twitter for "doxxing" Zhou using publicly available information, Twitter told us that the account had been suspended for "violating Twitter rules against abuse and harassment", which was false as we neither incited abuse nor harrassment, but merely asked questions. But the confusing part is that at the same time, Twitter fabricated an entirely different explanation for its decision when speaking to outside media, telling them the suspension was due to "platform manipulation" - whatever that means.
An odd mix of conflicting explanations but in any case, neither was true as we said at the time, and as we further told Bloomberg, the suspension was "unjustified, and likely motivated by reasons other than the stated ones" adding that "we are confident that we did not violate any of the stated Twitter terms: we neither incited harassment, nor did we ‘dox’ the public official, whose contact information is as of this moment listed on the Wuhan institute’s website."
Fast forward to late Friday night, when unexpectedly we received a brief email from Twitter Support informing us that "we made an error in our enforcement action" as a result of which "we have unsuspended your account."
Speaking to Bloomberg, a Twitter spokesperson said that "we made an error in our enforcement action in this case. Based on additional context from the account holder in appeal, we have reinstated the account. We have a dedicated appeals process for all account holders."
Funny how mistakes happen when you ban first and ask questions later (and only when prompted to do so).
In any case, no bad blood right - honest mistake? Well, not really: before all this happened, none other than Twitter's CEO was following us.
That's OK though, we never expected an apology. We are just glad that we will be able to share facts and perspectives with our now 700K Twitter followers, a number which has spiked by more than 30K in just the past few hours since the suspension was overturned.
In 2017, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” and adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord.”
“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” the representatives were told by cold warrior think tank denizen Clint Watts. “America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”
“Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end,” Watts added.
The Grayzonereports that it has been blacklisted as a source on Wikipedia following a concerted campaign by a suspicious-looking group of editor accounts, many of whom appear to have ties to the right-wing opposition in Venezuela. Wikipedia, whose co-founder once told the US Senate that the online encyclopedia project “may be helpful to government operations and homeland security”, has added The Grayzone to a very short list of outlets that are never to be used under any circumstances, claiming on apparently no basis whatsoever that it publishes false information.
“In fact, in its more than four years of existence, including its first two years hosted at the website AlterNet (whose use is not forbidden on Wikipedia), The Grayzone has never had to issue a major correction or retract a story,” Grayzone’s Ben Norton says in its report on the matter. Norton documents how the Wikipedia editors are unable to cite any actual false information in any of the outlet’s publications in their arguments, leaving only their objection that Grayzone doesn’t parrot US government-approved narratives like The New York Times, Bellingcat, and Wikipedia’s other designated “reliable sources”.
Norton also notes how Wikipedia has designated the leak publication outlet WikiLeaks an unreliable source despite its nearly 14-year record of authentic publications. Wikipedia designates WikiLeaks as “generally unreliable,” making the utterly baseless claim that “there are concerns regarding whether the documents are genuine or tampered.”
“The internet encyclopedia has become a deeply undemocratic platform, dominated by Western state-backed actors and corporate public relations flacks, easily manipulated by powerful forces. And it is run by figures who often represent these same elite interests, or align with their regime-change politics,” Norton writes.
Norton’s breakdown of the ways Wikipedia is slanted to consistently favor pro-establishment narratives is comprehensive, and well worth reading in its entirety. This short Mintpress News article by Alan MacLeod on the way this same monopolistic editing dynamic has seen Mintpress, teleSur English, and Venezuela Analysis blacklisted from Wikipedia in the same way is also worth a look.
This all comes out as we learn that Facebook is attaching warning labels to posts from outlets sponsored by governments which have not been absorbed into the US-centralized empire like RT and CGTN, but attaching no such label to outlets funded by imperial governments like BBC and Radio Free Europe. There is not any discernible difference in the degree of bias shown in state media from unabsorbed nations like Russia and China than there is in state media from the US and UK (or oligarchic media from the US and UK for that matter), but Facebook causes its 2.6 billion active users to look at one with suspicion but not the other.
This also comes out at the same time we learn that Twitter has deleted over 170,000 accounts for “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China”. CNN reports that the accounts were determined to be “tied to the Chinese government” by “experts” who we learn later in the article are none other than the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think tank geared explicitly toward fomenting anti-China sentiment in Australia.
“Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has slammed ASPI for pushing a ‘one-sided, pro-American view of the world’, while the former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby added that ASPI is ‘the architect of the China threat theory in Australia’,” journalist Ajit Singh noted on Twitter, adding, “Australian Senator Kim Carr has slammed ASPI for seeking to ‘promote a new cold war with China’ in collaboration with the US. In February, Carr highlighted that ASPI received $450,000 funding from the US State Department in 2019–20.”
This blatant imperialist narrative manipulation operation are the “experts” Twitter consulted in determining which accounts were “tied to the Chinese government” and therefore needed to be silenced. Twitter meanwhile continues to allow known fake accounts like the MEK propaganda operation “Heshmat Alavi” to continue inauthentically posing as real people, even when their propaganda is publicized by the President of the United States, because such accounts toe the imperialist line against empire-targeted governments.
This also comes out at the same time the mass media are warning us that Russia, China and Iran are “employing state media, proxy outlets, and social media accounts to amplify criticism of the United States related to the death of George Floyd and subsequent events.”
“As protesters hit the streets in cities across the country, America’s foreign adversaries have flooded social media with content meant to sow division and discord in the wake of George Floyd’s death, according to a U.S. government intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News,” we are told by the Disney-owned ABC.
“These actors criticize the United States as hypocritical, corrupt, undemocratic, racist, guilty of human rights abuses and on the verge of collapsing,” the bulletin reads, which to anyone who’s been paying attention is obviously true. This is a news story about people from other countries saying true things about the United States of America.
“This is yet another indicator that Russia is using the combination of overt propaganda and covertly disseminated disinformation to sow discord across our populace, expand the cracks in our society, and undermine the credibility of the U.S. government,” former senior Department of Homeland Security official and current ABC News contributor John Cohen informs us.
Ahh, okay. Cool. Thank you for the information, former senior Department of Homeland Security official and current ABC News contributor John Cohen. Man it sure is a good thing America doesn’t have state media. Think about how bad the disinformation would be.
Social media outlets were told that they need to censor their platforms to “prevent the fomenting of discord,” but obviously they didn’t move quickly enough, because the discord has been well and truly fomented. And now they are in a mad scramble to prevent Americans from hearing what people in foreign nations have to say about that, still apparently laboring under the delusion that this is anything other than homegrown, purebred, cornfed, American-as-apple-pie discord.
The most distinctive feature of the last four years has been expanding consciousness. Expanding consciousness of media corruption, of DNC corruption, of government corruption, of the excessive amount of power wielded by the US presidency and the absurd esteem people used to have for that position, of the abuse of immigrants, of police militarization, of unhealed racial wounds, etc.
This is encouraging, because you can’t fix something you haven’t made conscious. This is true of our own unresolved psychological issues, and it’s true of our unresolved collective issues as well. The first step toward a healthy world is expanded consciousness.
This is why increasing government opacity, internet censorship, and the war on journalism are so dangerous. Corruption and abuse thrive in darkness, and corrupt abusers want to keep that darkness intact. They want to keep things as unconscious as possible.
It’s beginning to look like that cat’s out of the bag, though, and I would be very surprised if they ever manage to get that sucker back in there.
ORIGINAL LINK COVID-19 Political Risk - Dems Say 'Yes' To Antifa Protests, 'No' To Trump RalliesTyler DurdenFri, 06/12/2020 - 16:45
As hundreds of thousands of Americans take to the streets in protest at systemic racism, capitalism, rich people, Trump supporters, white people, straight people, and civilized people (we are sure we are missing some instigators of violence here), politicians, leaders, and the liberal intelligentsia went out of their way to explain how COVID-19 had become a 'woke' virus of sorts.
On June 4, more than 1,200 public-health experts signed a letter saying the protests were “vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of black people in the United States...
"...as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.
... This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. ”
“Yes, corona is happening. It’s real, it’s deadly. But racism kills way more lives.”
We'd like to see the 'math' on that one.
This hypocritical malarkey was already exposed when considering the rabid reaction to "peaceful protesters" who urged their local officials nationwide to ease the lockdown and let them be free once again.
However, Democratic Party hypocrisy just went to '11' after President trump announced plans to restart his infamously well-attended rallies.
U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., said in a tweet this week...
The president’s plan to hold mass rallies in Florida and elsewhere as we experience a resurgence in COVID cases is irresponsible and selfish. https://t.co/G6tdqua70c
And, as SaraACarter.com notes, Demings was not the only democrat to call out Trump rallies, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also tweeted:
“Trump wants 15,000 delegates cheering him at his GOP convention in Florida. No social distancing. His rejection of medical advice endangers not only those there but those they come in contact with. Trump’s a threat to the health and well-being of the country. He must be defeated.”
Trump wants 15,000 delegates cheering him at his GOP convention in Florida. No social distancing. His rejection of medical advice endangers not only those there but those they come in contact with. Trump's a threat to the health and well-being of the country. He must be defeated.
And just in case you were unsure if Dr. Fauci was 'political', he has suddenly become very worried about American attending rallies... (oddly quiet duringt the protestations of the last few weeks...
Over 95% of “COVID Deaths” recorded in England and Wales had potentially serious comorbidities, according to statistics released by NHS England.
The latest figures make for pretty stark reading. Or, rather, they would make for stark reading…if they didn’t follow the exact same pattern already shown in other nations around the world.
You can read the full report here. We’re going to focus on the comorbidity stats. Here are the number of deaths where Covid19 was listed as the only cause, split by age:
Ages 0-19: 3
Ages 20-39: 32
Ages 40-59: 255
Ages 60-79: 551
Ages 80+: 477
These are across all of England and Wales since the beginning of the “pandemic”.
Simply put: Of the 27045 deaths with Covid19 in English hospitals (up to June 3rd), only 1318 had no pre-existing conditions. That’s less than 5%.
This mirrors, almost exactly, the statistics reported in Italy back in March.
Christopher Bowyer has made some great graphs for the figures at Hector Drummond Magazine, none more impactful than this this:
Those big green bars are all the people who died “with” Covid19 AND some other serious disease. The little yellow bars are the people who died with Covid19 and nothing else.
In fact, the 25,727 other cases were listed as having over 42,000 comorbidities. That’s almost 2 each (the report itself points out that many patients had multiple conditions). This, again, aligns completely with the Italian figures which said over 80% of fatalities had at least 2 comorbidities.
What are these comorbidities? We don’t know. Not entirely specifically. The report lists ischemic heart disease, chronic kidney disease, asthma and dementia among others. But it also lists nearly 19,000 “other” conditions, presumably including liver failure, emphysema, AIDS, ALL forms of cancers and literally potentially thousands of other diseases.
Implicit in this is the possibility that these diseases were the actual cause of death, and that Covid19 played no direct role at all.
Further, the PCR test for coronavirus can return false positives in up to 80% of cases, so it’s entirely possible the majority of these deaths never even had the virus.
This isn’t breaking news. We have covered this numerous times.
No matter how you switch them around the Covid numbers, as they currently stand, will never add up.
The latest research published last night by the journal Science repudiated prior claims that early incidences of the virus in the US petered out, and instead found that at least seven different strains of the virus that have been circulating in California since the early days of the outbreak, sugges
Raynard Jackson at a White House roundtable on race relations June 10, 2020 (screenshot)
At a roundtable Wednesday at the White House on race relations, a black leader addressed his remarks to media, accusing them of lying about Trump's accomplishents for blacks.
"I would like to say to all the media assembled here," began Raynard Jackson as he pointed his finger around the room then turned to the president.
"I wish they would quit lying about what you've done, specifically for the black community," said Jackson, the president and CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, a lobbying firm based in the nation's capital.
He referred to "liberal, radical journalists" such as MSNBC's Joy Reid, CNN's Don Lemon and Roland Martin.
Jackson said they're "putting more poison into the black community than any drug dealer."
He accused them of "spreading lies" about the economy, such as claiming the boom prior to the coronavirus lockdowns was a continuation of Barack Obama's policies
"I have a degree in accounting," said Jackson, who hosts an internet-based radio show on the U.S. Talk Network. "I keep up with the economy. They're lying."
Jackson asked Reid, Lemon and Martin why they're afraid to have black Republicans on their shows "who know what they hell they're talking about."
Trump touted his success on issues important to the black community such as criminal justice and prison reform, and opportunity zones for business. He frequently has pointed to the lowest unemployment rate and job growth ever recorded for blacks, prior to the coronavirus shutdown, along with record support of historically black colleges and education-choice initiatives.
Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Human Development, said they were there to talk about "some of the concerns in the black community" in the wake of the death of George Floyd "that have risen to the point that people all around the world are making their voices heard."
"This is an opportune time to do something about it," Carson said, "because this administration already has established a record of solving problems -- problems that people have just talked about for many years."
Carson said Trump "has made it a priority to solve this problem."
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose for a photo in front of the statue of Saint John Paul II before participating in a wreath laying ceremony Tuesday, June 2, 2020, at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C. (Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks)
"We're all going to be helping in that process, and there are many others out there, people of good will," Carson said.
"There are some that just wait for anything to criticize," he said. "But there are actually some people who actually want to see a solution, and I've had a chance to talk to many of them."
He wants solutions that will get people out of poverty.
Carson said the fundamentals of the economy that provided the boom that benefited the black community are still in place as states emerge from the coronavirus lockdown.
Trump's policy has been "a rising tide floats all boats," Carson said, which is why he doesn't "spend a lot of time with identity politics."
"We want everybody to be successful," he said.
Pastor Darrell Scott, co-founder of the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, said that during the coronavirus shutdown "we've pressed pause."
"But we're ready to push play now and continue in the positive initiatives regarding the black community," he said.
Only choice is 'left and further left
Sonnie Johnson, a writer and talk-radio host, said "the black community is not doing OK."
She began by praising Trump for removing regulations and taxation that had "prevented our communities from being able to see sustainable growth ... to get us out of generational poverty."
Blaming progressive policies, she said blacks are "not OK when it comes to things like education."
"All of these things have been under Democratic control for 60 years, and they are not going to change until we have a Republican Party that is willing to go into these communities and actually offer a choice, about how we can do things differently," she said.
Johnson said that on the local level, the only choice blacks have had is "left and further left."
However, she said, her generation has begun to "change the negative dynamics" on the critical issue of marriage and family.
Ja'Ron Smith, who has been an assistant to Trump for domestic policy since April 2019, emphasized that "it's about results."
"It's not just about us talking here, it's about what we're going to produce out of this meeting," he said.
'Don't think that you are alone'
Wayne DuPree, who hosts a podcast and serves as a board member of the National Diversity Coalition for Donald Trump, said he hears from many black callers to his program and "people who are on boards" who support the president.
"They know what happened in the Obama administration. They know what you're doing. They also see what the media is doing to you," he said to Trump.
"So, don't think that you are alone. It's just that they need to hear more from you," DuPree said.
Trump agreed.
"It's the only way you get through the media, because the media is almost 100% negative," the president said.
Via The New York Times
Via The New York Times
