Episode 438: May 26-28, 2020

Dan and Jordan discuss the stretch of time where Alex responds to Trump finally seeming to come to his social media defense, and the protests in response to the killing of George Floyd begins.

Topics covered include:

• Alex reports on a report from the Freedom Foundation about a few Covid-19 deaths being gunshot victims. This report itself is a misrepresentation of a Washington Department of Health press briefing, and this foundation is an anti-union think tank funded by right-wing billionaires.

• Alex complains that a murder victim was listed in the New York Times list of Covid-19 deaths, failing to recognize that they released a correction and fixed their error before the release of the late edition of the paper.

• Alex claims that 80% of Covid-19 deaths are people over 85. This is not true.

• The CDC’s report on excess deaths in New York City.

• Alex misrepresents Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s April executive order about nursing homes creating dedicated units to treat Covid-19 patients.

• Alex gets very anti-Islam about a few mosques being allowed to broadcast their call to prayer during Ramadan in London. Alex pretends that anyone trying to broadcast some kind of Christianity would be shut down, which means he’s never heard of Chicago’s “State Street Preacher.”

• Alex is mad that some UK politicians are fasting in solidarity with Muslims during Ramadan, but he completely missed the story where one of them accidentally tweeted out a picture of bacon to celebrate the beginning of the fast.

• Alex discusses Trump’s antagonism toward mail-in voting. The reality is that many states already use mail-in voting primarily, we have a well-established absentee voting process, and Trump’s spokesperson has used it in every election since 2008.

• The Brennan Center for Justice has cited rates of fraud related to mail-in voting as being lower than rates of in-person voting fraud.

• Alex complains that NY Health Department deleted something from their website. A spokesperson explained that they just updated the guidance from the original declaration.

• Alex discusses a Robert Kennedy Jr. article about two Bill Gates-linked vaccine trials. Two of the primary sources cited in this article seem to not match the content of the article, which is super suspicious.

• Alex appears to have admitted to being a lobbyist, and if he isn’t lying, he may have committed a crime if he didn’t report these expenses.

• Alex begins to build a number of very racist narratives about the murder of George Floyd. Dan and Jordan discuss the ways he does so by comparing his use of language surrounding this event, as compared to instances where a non-white person kills a white person. It’s like night and day.