House Report: Trump Tanked the CDC
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released a staff report yesterday that details the efforts made by the Trump administration to intentionally compromise the scientific integrity of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) coronavirus response. The reason, according to the House Committee was to serve the former President’s political goals.
The following was released in a statement about the report:
“This staff report is the third installment in a series of reports documenting the Select Subcommittee’s findings from its investigation into the Trump Administration’s rampant political interference with the federal public health response to the coronavirus pandemic. The first installment chronicled the Trump White House’s embrace of a dangerous and discredited herd immunity via mass infection strategy well before vaccines were available. The second installment revealed extensive evidence of the Trump White House’s relentless pressure campaigns targeting the Food and Drug Administration’s scientific decision-making on the coronavirus.
Chairman Clyburn released the following statement about today’s report:
The Select Subcommittee’s investigation has shown that the previous administration engaged in an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government’s pandemic response, which undermined public health to benefit the former president’s political goals. As today’s report shows, President Trump and his top aides repeatedly attacked CDC scientists, compromised the agency’s public health guidance, and suppressed scientific reports in an effort to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus. This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk. As we continue to recover from the coronavirus crisis, we must also continue to work to safeguard scientific integrity and restore the American people’s trust in our public health institutions.”
While it appeared that Trump was likely sabotaging his own agency’s efforts to protect the country from Covid, this latest report has produced the evidence necessary to formally make the claim. While the committee has concluded that Trump’s motivations were political, there were also opportunities for his allies and family to use the pandemic to their own financial advantage.
The following is a SHERO article that was originally published on July 7, 2020:
PPP Loan Program Funding is Questionable
Vocal opponents of government spending, Trump insiders, and grifters hoping to follow in Trump's footsteps were revealed to have benefited from the PPP Program for small businesses.
The Small Business Administration and the Treasury Department released detailed data on the loans made under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) yesterday, and some of the businesses who were provided with loans are shocking. Those who received a loan greater than $150,000 through the PPP were the only names made public, as the recent disclosure does not cover who got loans at an amount below that number.
The report did not specify the exact amount that each organization received, and 86.5 percent of PPP borrowers remain unnamed. Those loans that were disclosed represent nearly three-fourths of total loan dollars approved, but make up a far smaller proportion of the number of actual loans.
The intention of the PPP loans was to protect small businesses and their workers by infusing needy businesses with enough fluidity in order to keep workers on the payroll. Under the terms of these loans, if employees are retained and paid by the businesses receiving funds, the Small Business Association (SBA) will forgive the loans, essentially turning them into federal grants.
There was already a recent scandal about large corporate businesses who qualified for funds returning the money once the loans were made public. Shake Shack, Potbelly, Axios, and several other corporations scrambled to return hundreds of millions of dollars in loan money after facing detrimental public scrutiny.
None of this compares to the shocking information released yesterday that revealed that we were all right to fear that Trump would use the PPP program to benefit his friends and family. Businesses tied to Jared Kushner were able to get loans, and so were conservative Oklahoma Representatives Mullin and Hern.
NBC News has confirmed that Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in New Jersey, which is named after Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner’s grandfather, got a loan in the range of $1 million to $2 million. Jared Kushner’s parents’ family foundation currently supports the school. St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, the private school Barron Trump attends, has accepted an undisclosed amount of PPP money. Though the exact amount of the loan St. Andrew's has received is unknown, the school reported an endowment of over $8 million in a 2017 tax filing.
St. Andrews is not unlike many other elite private and charter schools across the country that have also benefited from the PPP loan program. St. Andrews has also confirmed it has no intention of returning the funds. A spokesperson from the school issued a statement that read in part: “Like so many of its peer schools, St. Andrew’s applied for PPP funds through our longstanding bank to ensure retention of our full faculty and staff, including hourly employees and coaches, during this very challenging and uncertain time. If the terms of the program change, we will review to make sure we are in compliance and adjust accordingly.”
At a House of Representatives Small Business Committee event in mid-May, Hern (R-OK) told the SBA's Inspector General, "This hurt business owners, good owners, who have executed the correct practices to help build up their savings, credit rating and other aspects of their businesses, while rewarding potentially bad owners for having horrible credit and no cash on their balance sheet."
Hern continued to ironically blame the SBA's implementation of the program for creating confusion, "Many have said to me, 'I'll just give the money back and lay everybody off.' That's not the purpose of this and it's not where we want to be."
Vocal opponents of federal spending, who have actively promoted tax reforms, took PPP loans in direct opposition to what they claim to represent. Ayn Rand Institute was a recipient as was Grover Norquist Group, led by Grover Norquist, who once said he wanted to “shrink government to the size it could be drowned in a bathtub.”
The Ayn Rand Institute, which was named for the writer cited as an influence on Libertarian thought, was approved for an amount between $350,000 and one million dollars. Norquist, a life-long proponent for tax reform and less government, was the beneficiary of a loan for between $150,000 and $350,000.
Planned Parenthood was also funded with loans totaling as much as $150 million for all of its various affiliates through the PPP loan program. For some reason, these loans infuriated anti-abortion-rights conservatives, who cheered last year when Trump moved successfully to block the organization from getting access to the federal government's main family planning fund.
Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), a close Trump ally tweeted his response: "Planned Parenthood shouldn't have received a dime from the government's PPP program. It's sick!" He said nothing about the slew of Conservatives who benefitted and those close to Trump who have crossed yet another conflict of interest barrier.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s family’s business, Foremost Maritime, got a loan valued at between $350,000 and $1 million. Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Perdue Inc., a trucking company co-founded by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, received between $150,000 and $350,000 in loan money.
Billionaire rapper and shoe designer Kanye West’s company received a multimillion-dollar loan as part of the federal government’s coronavirus stimulus package. Yeezy LLC, a California company, is listed in the Treasury’s log as a recipient of a loan worth between $2 million and $5 million. The company self-identified as being male-owned and a Black or African-American business.
The paperwork claimed that 160 jobs would be saved by the PPP loan, but the question for many is why West needed government funding to accomplish that task when his supposed net worth is so high. We should also be questioning West’s latest announcement that he will be running for President given his new supposed need for cash. His motivations may be far beyond feeding his ego at this point — he might be following in Trump’s footsteps of using it to fundraise for his personal life.
Numerous news media organizations were also the beneficiaries of received PPP loans: Forbes got at least $5 million; The Washington Times got at least $1 million; The Washingtonian got at least $350,000; The Daily Caller received at least $350,000; The Daily Caller News Foundation got at least $150,000 and The American Prospect received at least $150,000.
Political organizations also received loans including the Ohio Democratic Party (at least $150,000), the Florida Democratic Party Building Fund (at least $350,000), the Women’s National Republican Club of New York (at least $350,000), and the Black Republican Caucus in Florida (at least $150,000).
Possibly the only good news in all of this is that the Paycheck Protection Program resumed accepting applications on July 6, 2020, in response to the Paycheck Protection Program Extension Act. The new deadline to apply for a PPP loan is now August 8, 2020. I also feel compelled to disclose to you, my valued and appreciated readers, that SHERO newsletter, a burgeoning small business in its own right, has received no small business loan funding because I didn’t apply for any.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
Paid subscriptions and one-time tributes embedded in each article allow me to keep publishing critical and informative work that is sometimes made available to the public — thank you. If you like this piece and want to support independent journalism further, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription or gift subscription, or donate as much as you like today.
I believe the majority of Americans - anti- as well as pro-Trump - always believed the disbursement of PPP funds favored those who did not need them even as they also helped perhaps millions of people and businesses that did.
It is the lying and obfuscation surrounding the program that bother me most. Once again, as we have seen since Trump began his campaign and then through his presidency*, we are witness to the incredible power of the lie - not just the big lie but the tens of thousands of small lies - to influence not just individuals but the change the visible culture of the US and even the world. Lying now is a strategy for nearly everyone who wants something they cannot have or get on their own. We suffer.
Death by a thousand cuts. The sheer magnitude of Trump and Republican supporters have normalized the art of lying as many of us stood by and watched from the sideline. The use of their propaganda machinery (Fox News most notably) was evident throughout the south and northern rural areas creating this intense echo chamber. Most Democrats have ignored the warnings and now like an invasive organism has infiltrated our democracy and is on the verge of total collapse. If the Democrats can't turn back this tide by the midterm, we will be witnessing the failure of the greatest democratic experiment in history. Welcome to the Dark Ages 2.0