Donald Trump held a rally Tuesday night at Omaha, Nebraska’s Eppley Airfield that attracted somewhere between 6,000 people (the Omaha World-Herald’s estimate) and 29,000 people (Trump’s personal estimate, LOL). When the event ended at 9 p.m., the temperature was just above 30 degrees. Because of traffic and/or a shortage of buses, hundreds of attendees were stranded at the airport, some until 12:40 a.m., waiting to be shuttled back to their cars.
A Twitter account that follows Omaha emergency-services radio traffic conveyed chatter indicating that several people at the airport had to be treated for exposure to the cold; authorities say six or seven attendees were taken to the hospital, though not all those cases were necessarily related to the weather. Regardless of temperature issues, rallygoers were also at risk of contracting the coronavirus: Eastern Nebraska is home to some of the hottest COVID hot spots in the country, and photos from the event show that the crowd, which included many people who were not wearing masks, was packed tightly together.
…An article published last week by USA Today noted that countywide rates of coronavirus infection increased, by varying amounts, after five recent Trump 2020 events in the Midwest…
…The downside for voters is that, like former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain—who attended a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20; tested positive for COVID-19 nine days later; and permanently ceased making America great on July 30—they could die. Marathon County, Wisconsin, currently has a new daily case rate 17 times as high as New York City’s; on Monday, 11 Marathon County coronavirus patients were hospitalized, and one death was reported. One way or another, these rallies could be the last time Trump fans get to see him.
I could almost feel sorry for some of these True Believers – if it wasn’t for the bigotry that is part of the Trump belief system they embrace.
Eideard 
Don Jr. dismisses coronavirus deaths: ‘The number is almost nothing’ https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/trump-jr-coronavirus-deaths-nothing-433665 “Roughly 1,000 Americans died from the disease on Thursday, as Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show to downplay the U.S. death toll. And among those who survive coronavirus, many have long-term damage to vital organs and lingering chronic symptoms.”
Single-day coronavirus cases in US hit record high : As of Friday, the U.S. had tallied 8,944,934 cases of coronavirus and 228,656 deaths https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/united-states
Fox News host Laura Ingraham: Trump ‘likely saved us’ by resisting ‘unproven strategies’ for fighting pandemic https://www.foxnews.com/media/laura-ingraham-trump-likely-saved-us-economy-pandemic “President Trump, having seen what a media superstar Dr. [Anthony] Fauci had become, he couldn’t just let Fauci decide everything from when it is safe to get on a train to when your kids can play t-ball again,” Ingraham said. “The media would’ve loved that, all those daily COVID briefings, all the talk of shared sacrifice as they headed off to the Hamptons to blow off steam on the weekends.”
“Coronavirus updates: US adding cases faster than 1 per second, nearing 9M cases; Fauci supports mask mandate; 228K US deaths” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/10/30/covid-news-us-9-m-cases-ihop-los-angeles-wisconsin/6077964002/
“US coronavirus cases hit record daily high and experts warn daily death rates will triple by mid-January” https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 6:15 AM · Oct 30, 2020:
“More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!” https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1322150249255895042
💀 “President Donald Trump defied logic at his Michigan rally Friday, claiming that physicians “get more money” when they falsely inflate the number of COVID-19 deaths.
And he repeated a story earlier at a Wisconsin rally that, when asked by a friend recently to name someone more famous than he is, the only name Trump could come up with was Jesus Christ. The crowd went wild.
Trump falsely insisted to his Michigan crowd that reports of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. inflate the actual toll because doctors, for some reason, collect more money from coronavirus fatalities — so they lie about them to boost the numbers.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-covid-death-money-jesus-christ_n_5f9c94d4c5b65662bcc6f565
💀 ‘Red mirage’: the ‘insidious’ scenario if Trump declares an early victory https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/red-mirage-trump-election-scenario-victory
“All votes will not be counted by midnight on November 3,” said Tom Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and homeland security secretary under George W Bush who decries Trump’s “absolutely despicable conduct and rhetoric” about the election.”
💀 “States with higher coronavirus death rates may see declining voter support for President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, possibly by margins large enough to swing tight election races, a new study has found. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/election-coronavirus-deaths-trump-swing-state
The decline in support, reported in the journal Science Advances on Friday, mirrored the effects that casualties of the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Iraq War had on past presidents’ approval ratings with voters. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd8564
☐ “A senior adviser to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign doubled down Sunday on baseless allegations leveled by the president that U.S. doctors are inflating coronavirus deaths for profit as the country sees record levels of new infections.” https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/01/doctors-profit-coronavirus-deaths-trump-miller-433793 Bonus points: Jason Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Miller_(communications_strategist)
☐ Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s former FDA commissioner, shot down the notion that doctors were profiting off coronavirus patients in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/523851-gottlieb-pushes-back-on-trumps-comments-of-rounding-the-corner-on Gottlieb also pushed back on Trump’s comments of ’rounding the corner’ on virus: ‘Things are getting worse’
☐ Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that “We have seen on multiple occasions instances where people have claimed that they have died from Covid-19 and that wasn’t the case.”
☐ President Trump’s favorite coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas apologized on Twitter for appearing Saturday on Russia’s state-controlled RT, where he insisted that the U.S. is turning the corner on the pandemic and that lockdowns are actually “killing people.” RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a Russian state-owned media outlet registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This means that all of its content is labeled as propaganda attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.
Atlas appeared on RT just hours after The Washington Post released an interview with Anthony Fauci, who criticized Atlas for his controversial views on the pandemic. https://www.axios.com/scott-atlas-rt-russia-today-48f2dcae-8660-438e-90af-407b90e4b490.html
☐ “A once restrained Fauci unleashes on White House coronavirus approach days before election” https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/donald-trump-anthony-fauci-2020-campaign/index.html See also Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fauci-covid-winter-forecast/2020/10/31/e3970eb0-1b8b-11eb-bb35-2dcfdab0a345_story.html
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” (Philip K. Dick)
The American Medical Association (AMA) on Friday issued a scathing statement condemning President Trump’s claim that doctors are purposefully inflating coronavirus case numbers, calling the suggestion “malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided.”
Trump, while speaking at a rally in Waterford Township, Mich., on Friday, argued without evidence that doctors are improperly counting coronavirus deaths for monetary gain.
“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of COVID,'” he said. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/523740-american-medical-association-rips-trump-claim-that-doctors-are
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Rochester International Airport in Rochester, Minnesota on October 30. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images (click to enlarge)
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President Donald Trump on Saturday night appeared to embrace the actions of supporters in Texas who surrounded a Joe Biden campaign bus in what a Biden campaign official described as an attempt to slow down the bus and run it off the road.
Trump tweeted a video of the caravan surrounding the Biden bus with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS!” https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/politics/biden-bus-2020-campaign-texas-trump-supporters/index.html
“Hey Laredo, Don Jr. here. I heard you had an awesome turnout for the Trump Train,” Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, said in a video tweeted by Daily Caller contributor Kambree Kawahine Koa. “It would be great if you guys would all get together, head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome… let’s show them how strong Texas still is as Trump country.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/10/31/pro-trump-trucks-tried-running-biden-bus-off-the-road-campaign-says/?sh=108a76e7689e
Beverly Hills police declare unlawful assembly at pro-Trump rally https://abc7.com/beverly-hills-trump-rally-unlawful-assembly-bhpd/7524318/ “Approximately 40 protesters did assemble at Roxbury Park and then marched to the USA Freedom Rally,” said Beverly Hills police Lt. Max Subin. “The protester from Roxbury Park got into a violent fight with a pro-Trump protester. It was at the point that an unlawful assembly was declared by the Incident Commander and the Roxbury Park protesters did leave and march back to Roxbury Park.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now looking into a Friday incident in Texas where supporters of President Donald Trump aggressively surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas interstate, according to the Texas Tribune. https://www.wane.com/top-stories/fbi-investigating-incident-where-trump-train-surrounded-biden-bus/
See also Texas Tribune https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/31/biden-trump-texas-bus/
“Where the Brownshirts Came From” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/where-the-brownshirts-came-from
Brownshirts…8AM MST tomorrow morning, 2nd
* Marco Rubio Applauds Trump Caravan Surrounding Biden Bus in Texas: ‘We Do That in Florida Every Day’ https://www.newsweek.com/marco-rubio-applauds-trump-caravan-surrounding-biden-bus-texas-we-do-that-florida-every-day-1544118 “”I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas,” Rubio said to a large, mostly mask-less crowd. “Did you see it? All the cars on the road, we love what they did.” The Florida Senator continued: “We do that in Florida every day. I love seeing the boat parades. We thank all the great patriots.”
* “Trump defends Texas drivers who surrounded Biden bus, sees car rallies in NY, NJ : Trump previously defended the ‘Trump Train,’ saying ‘these patriots did nothing wrong’ https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-defends-texas-drivers-who-surrounded-biden-bus-sees-car-rallies-in-ny-nj
* “FBI says it’s reviewing Biden bus swarmed by ‘Trump train’ caravan, contrary to Trump tweet” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/02/fbi-reviewing-biden-bus-trump-train-incident-contrary-trump-tweet/6122883002/
* The Voter Protection Program, a legal collaborative that has published guidance on driver-related political demonstrations, notes that voter intimidation is a crime under federal law and under every state’s laws, which applies equally to intimidation conducted from vehicles: “This guidance outlines law and best practices for law enforcement to respond to drivers–often organized into “caravans” of multiple vehicles who express political support for a candidate while engaging in conduct that can threaten public safety,violate the law, and/or cross the line into illegal voter intimidation.” https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2020/11/Driver-Guidance-11.1.20.pdf (These materials were prepared collaboratively by the Voter Protection Program, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, 21 CP Solutions, and the Crime and Justice Institute)