plato is for slate is for playing beethoven 202250th anniversary here. after days of uncertainty doctors say u.s. president donald trump no longer has any covert 19 symptoms trump returned to the white house earlier in the week after hospital treatment saying he felt good and that fellow americans should not let covert 19 dominate their lives with the presidential election just weeks away trump is presenting himself as a corona superhero and sometimes appearing to show contempt for the more than 200000 americans who've lost their lives in the pandemic so on to the point we asked trump's mysterious recovery will cover decide the u.s.

election. thanks so much for joining us here on the show where my guests are usually a fisher who argues the trump prefers the simplistic to the scientific but that means nothing to the virus also witnesses rachel tells in front from the german marshall fund who says trump's strange corona show as she puts it hurts more than it helps but it is still a very tight race and a warm welcome to william blue cross u.s. native and d.-w. news reporter he believes the trumps critics would be wise to temper their shopping for nothing has taken the president down yet. interesting statements thank you all 3 for being here lovely rachel townsend for i don't 1st question of 1st impression

you talk about trump strange corona show what is your response your personal response to that show to that presentation that we've seen. yes i mean it's it's in saying sort of movie. in the middle of a real pandemic and as you said in the beginning 200000 people have died and then he creates this crazy. that's like like an advertisement like the theater of the absurd it is very much like the theater of the absurd with the background of a very very serious illness and a country that has not managed to to handle it correctly ok we agree that it's a theater of the absurd kind of a performance what is he trying to achieve donald trump with it i mean that he's a superman that he's a guy that is able to dominate this virus of this virus is not a very big deal just like he's always been saying all along and it should be very

importantly noted that this virus might not be such a big deal if everyone in america is able to get the kind of health care and the kind of access to medicines that he's been able to get but this can give the corner viruses costing average americans depending on their health insurance plan up to $70000.00 in most severe cases this is something the president trump doesn't have to deal with orders anyone in government because they get government health care through the whole show that he's putting on at the moment is this is it driven by gut instinct or is it a strategy behind it i mean i'd maybe those 2 things are the same thing he's got and strategy i mean he is a showman we know this from his years at the apprentice the apprentice and miss university really thrives in this kind of showmanship like atmosphere where testing the limits now how much he can bend reality the white house the trump white house has been very much a boy who cries wolf kind of situation and even if they are telling the truth now

even if trump really is better we just don't know there's absolutely no reason for us to believe what he's telling us and that's extremely damaging for both his supporters and his opponents to know what's really going on you know do we know do we know you know i mean you're a doctor and. when you you know with your doctor what are you seeing bill of health . donald trump at the moment even as a doctor it's hard to tell if you're not there because i mean he did get the medications that's actually reserved for severe cases and if he wasn't severely sick then why did he get them maybe because he said just give me everything that you have and i want it all and that is quite realistic. it's difficult to say also we don't see him all the time he might be resting in bed and later coming out pretending to be the superhero we don't we don't really know what is your guess is he going to be able to fight the company into the. weeks ahead it's going to be tough it's going to be tough but it totally depends on how he recovers now if you really is fine and if he does does get

a negative test because those something that i as a doctor find very difficult to see how right now being ineffective he runs around without a mask and i mean he does need to get a negative test before he can go back into debates and things i think that should really happen before he gets back to business as usual maybe he gets it done. i think we don't know yet i mean we'll know in the next week probably if he is in fact more seriously ill than he's letting on he's going to hit a wall and for example the debate there's no way he can 1st of all get a negative test 2nd of all stand up there for 90 minutes if he's not actually fit if he can if the debate happens and if you actually shows up then then i think we know ok he really did recover quickly but again he recovered maybe also quickly because he had every medicine even experimental modest medicines that others can get and he was lucky it was removed from certainly appeared to be pumped up when he

returns to the white house let's listen to a little bit of what he had to say. don't let it dominate don't let it take over your lives don't let that happen we have the greatest country in the world we're going back back to work when to be out front as your leader i had to do that i knew this danger to it but i had to do it i stood out front i led. in front of the president the president said don't let koby dominate don't let you take over your life's are americans likely to be inspired by that message you know you will comforting toward definitely not comforted some very few might be inspired by that message but let's look at michigan for a 2nd this was a state and i'm from michigan and this is a state that donald trump crucially won in the next election after it having gone to democrats in the previous 3 elections. and michigan was the 3rd worst hit state

in the beginning of the current crisis so when i talk to people who live here in the suburbs of detroit they they need 2 hands to count the people they know who are very seriously ill some of whom died so this show is not working with them it's not going to work of course we have to remember that even if polls are showing both nationwide and the crucial swing states that a majority 2 thirds whatever the number might be might be finding this completely unrealistic and not buying we're trying to saying we don't doesn't necessarily need that many votes as we saw in 2016 he doesn't need the popular vote to be able to win and that's the big question is yes the tides against donald trump yes the numbers are in favor of joe biden are they enough democrats been saying since the convention actually since coming from her 1st speech as the vice presidential pick that democrats need voters to come out in droves it's not enough just to have a win they need a landslide victory not only because of how the math works with the electoral college but just to make a just a definitive statement to trumpet all the supporters you know the reality is on our

side it's not going to be enough for there just to be a technical win that biden and the democrats. a real hard when there may be akin to what we saw great with reagan in his reelection in the eighty's and. the same is that i made it into the show as i indicated that perhaps a sense of among many americans they feel there's a contempt for their lives and struggles from the president is not going to he's not going to help to create a mood to push the democrats. to this so i do you say they need a mess right now what democrats are hoping for they immediately made this not about donald trump they made this about health care they made this about health care access they made this about the seriousness of the virus and that if donald trump the most looked after man in the world can get coronavirus and anyone can that still very serious really trying to use donald trump to their advantage to make their very point the question is the united states is very much an aspirational country that's america's mojo is its aspirational aspects that anything is possible

regardless of the fact you can go bankrupt a 1000 times as we've seen donald trump do it doesn't matter the man is still president the man became he put his mind to it and became president there's nothing more american than that idea and the question is are voters going to look at the reality and look at these 210000 deaths and all of the other messes that the united states is in social unrest cities on fire forests on fire massive hurricanes the economic crisis are they going to look at all those things or they listen to donald trump and listen to this in his kind of reverse optimism the best is yet to come stick with us anything as possible and try to dream big which of those americans are voters going to see or enough voters as i just said enough voters going to see to tip the election one way or the other you know. i think well what has always been doing and what he's still trying to do is really emotionalize everything he says and he really makes 2 groups of the people it's the ones that are with them

and his components and he he really gets the scrutiny. going and he emotional as what he has and is all about we can do with us together and but those are the bad guys we have to fight together and i think that is something that's emotionally working with the people unfortunately it's that he plays with the emotions the people have with their fear. and with an attempt to find somebody they can blame in order to know how to act in that situation and i think that is working for him and politics are human and humans are emotional so this works well and water almost appears to be a self destructive mode president trump has sparked further controversy by blocking talks with the democrats on a coronavirus stimulus package the. misery for many americans the kind of misery that his whole approach to the pandemic has brought with it. so far response to the

krona pandemic has left more than 7000000 people infected and over 200000 dead in the u.s. . at the start of the epidemic this is what he said. looks like by april you know what theory when it gets over the warbird miraculously goes away i hope that's true instead of listening to experts he suggests bizarre forms of treatment supposing we hit somebody with a tremendous whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful like what i said supposing it were the light in the body can which you can do either through the skin or. in some of the way right in that i see the disinfectant if you are. in a minute. he refused to wear a mask during his campaign appearances and at the televised debate in september he mocked his challenger joe biden for doing so was i don't know i don't wear masks like him every time you see he's got a mask it could be speak and 200 feet away from him he shows up with the biggest

mask i've ever seen. biden the coward versus the superman. will this strata. do you work. as a student trump the superman by the cow is he going to work the strategy now i think he was maybe on track to have a little bit of success with that and then he got infected himself and it's really the game changer in the narrative far i mean he has to do now because he is he isn't invulnerable he is and i have learned that we have discovered that we now know it apparently for a fact yeah and joe biden is not a coward joe biden is maybe smart because he's not the one who's infected i mean you know not to be crude but the attack is so clear if you can't if the president cannot even protect himself how is he supposed to protect the people. you know how do you make it might be instructive to compare donald trump with his his contempt again i'm going to use that word for for doctors for experts for specialists and

somebody like i'm going to medical who is herself a scientist you know this you you described it is so systematic science against superstition yeah yeah i mean what he's doing is it's so difficult difficult to watch how his scientific advisers tell him one thing and he does another he politicizes the measures against the coronavirus and iran way and gets the people not to wear the mask to make sure they aren't the real trump followers that's really dangerous and reckless and. i don't see how people who also have a scientific belief can cannot see that it's difficult to watch well joe biden for his part has made it clear that he wants corona to dominate the election and here's what he had to say on that front. here's what i'll do as president number one call on every single american to worry mask when they're around other people outside

their households where when you're on public transportation if i can say something here this is not about freedom it's about patriotism. is joe budden going to succeed and maintaining the coronas story is the central narrative of this election i mean we've had so many huge earth shattering issues and this election year starting with trump's impeachment then the pandemic the economic fallout the social injustice all the natural disasters trump taxes of have come out finally come to light or at least part of them the debate debacle any one of these things what up and in election and change the result we're dealing with all of these things at once it seems difficult to imagine how coronavirus won't be the big topic through the election but who knows what these next 2 or 3 weeks are going to bring you know time goes fast can you when you yourself have pointed out he's still a boxing metaphor he still on his feet is still fighting how does he manage it. because he's donald trump and he has you know he was once interviewed he was once

interviewed by a photographer for p.b.s. and he was asked you know how do you manage you know this this storm around you in dollar terms that i am the storm he really relishes in this chaos he likes creating chaos and controlling the chaos and you know his you might think his policies and his is being president is despicable but from that point of view he's very effective let me just stick with you for a 2nd because so you know i know that you have said that it's not just the president who is ill but the presidency that is ill that is sick that's right you know donald trump wants to make everything about himself always and for liberals or his opponents people around the world people here in europe who are laughing right now are saying i told you so are we even maybe even rejoicing in the fact that donald trump got coronavirus after denying it for so long or playing it down for so long that playing into his hands about making it all about trump what a president is. the presidency is sick the presidency is limited in what it can do the president is just the individual filling that role it's of course

a much broader office of advisors and executive branch and we see now that many high level military officials are inquire into it takes its toll on a country and if you do care about what we call the liberal world order of the post war or we care about you know a strong stable united states working with europe then you need a stronger you want a strong stable president and a presidency so we've seen this in the past you know with woodrow wilson with f.d.r. you know major major events happen they're sick they haven't really informed their their advisors or other people who might take over for them and we've just gotten lucky in these instances that there have been strong competent people around a week or 6 president to take over for things we might not always have that you know luck and history's been america's side for a long time we don't know how long that's going to last and pursuing this through. friends who we've become with perhaps the president himself is a little sick perhaps the presidency is a little sick of procedures jim

a newspaper wrote a couple of days ago america is sick. yeah i mean of course literally 1st of all america is sick and the numbers are bad and getting worse and the fact that it hasn't been able to deal more effectively you know like germany for example this is not a sign of a healthy country the fact that you know someone like donald trump 1st of all is president and 2nd of all that we cannot believe that we would be wrong to uncritically believe the information coming out of the white house this is a sign of sick this we should be able to believe the information coming out of the white house but sadly we cannot run america be a resurgent society a resurgent country politically medically in terms of the health of its people coming to struggle they self i think it's there's a lot of work to do it's going to be a tough time and things there's a lot of things that have to happen concerning the pandemic right now but also concerning the house system. having also. also for

workers. getting and how things are and things like that so that it's really and economically that has a lot of to be done so it's a long way there's a lot of work to do we've see we've seen the vice presidential debate taking place in utah mike pence on the woman home to the let's listen to what he had to say 1st and then we'll see what the challenger had to say from the very 1st. president donald trump has put the health of america 1st before there were more than 5 cousens in the united states all people who had returned from china president donald trump who would know whether american president had ever done that was he suspended all travel from china the 2nd largest economy in the world. would you make you hear about defense of president trump and his strategy it's a nice try. they have they were so many other things that went wrong and the people

who who actually brought the virus within to the country did not come from china but from europe and. or they did also come from europe and he didn't stop that on time and he never he keeps downplaying how dangerous the virus is you did that in the start which is why he didn't he didn't lock down the country early enough when he chose to lock down he didn't use the time to prepare the country for the reopening he real reopened too early and this is that's why he's still running after the pandemic and he keeps politicizing the measures against the coronavirus and that's just terribly dangerous ok well mike pence was up against a mother who's california son and so let's listen to what she had to say the american people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country and here are the facts 210000

dead people in our country in just the last several months over 7000000 people who have contracted this disease one in 5 businesses closed we're looking at front line workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers. rachel like myself you sent your alarm clock to be in the morning to watch the debate what did you make of the debates in general. i mean the debate in general was it was a bit like traveling in time back to 2015 and it was a return to sort of standard american political debates which are also not great and there's a lot of sort of running around the truth not answering questions. you know brutal attacks that sort of stay on the surface so this was you know by no means some kind of shining example of democracy but wow was it refreshing after the presidential debate i think they both. gave pretty good performances did quite well and what we see you know among other things is pence is so much better at defending defending

trump's policies than trump themself is. well we should be careful not to trip over the bar that we've set so low for so. penn some self just has described himself as rush limbaugh and decaf when he was a far right conservative radio show host so he has that call that says he's often forgotten about yeah right come on who else was attorney general and mike pence was a conservative radio show talk shows and not even in a very huge not even the biggest of markets so we should definitely as you say debates in general in the united states are not really a model and we should we should be mindful of where we keep our our bar i think when it comes to the ministrations claims about you know battling the virus and taking it seriously on a number of fronts the trump administration i think intentionally confuses instincts with outcomes a lot of their instincts are correct you know need to be tougher on china needing to get you know nato to shape up and be more of an equal partner with the united states and general relations the generalists in the united states and other parts

of the world trying to bring back manufacturing with a lot in a lot of these working class blue collar towns that has been decimated over the last several decades the instincts are right that doesn't mean the outcomes in the way they choose to pursue those policies are very good as we saw with the trade war most american consumers and american companies that are paying the. terrace for example and they will talk about their instincts but if their outcomes as you rightly pointed out ok you block travel from china would all the other things you didn't do or denied ok the biden bandwagon is racing forward to victory as you could almost say at this point in time what could upset the bandwagon himself as we see joe biden can also often be is own worst enemy yeah he's benefited from the coronavirus by having fewer opportunities put his foot in his mouth if something really big happens that takes all of our attention away from the coronavirus again that's probably good for trump i mean i hope that's going to have the big bad so i hope nothing like that happens but that would certainly up and

thanks yeah i also think only if you get that attention away from the coronavirus maybe back to economics or something that could help but i don't really see that coming unless unless the long wished upon vaccine comes out which might magically appear as trump keeps pushing and pushing pressuring his f.d.a. in the c.d.c. to do. who's going to be the next president of the united states of america. that is not such a simplistic question i want to see you not it was said will you tell me when you see sitting behind this is you know the guess you're going to give me yeah so you know we all know now that guessing is very dangerous the numbers look very good for biden the story line that i think is going to continue until election day which is and the circle around trump potentially getting sicker and sicker. is not good for trump therefore i do think biden it's biden's race to lose at this point you know

i also think so because trump has been trying to push away the coronavirus as long as he could whenever he could and right now he can't anymore and that's his biggest problem and that's i think that's going to be the weakness that cost him the wind there's definitely no way i'm going to be put on record for saying one way or. i think what you said was was very much right on there are 2 points to make we probably most likely will not have a result on election night and trump is probably going to everything in his power to sew doubt into the result so even if by that looks like he's winning and factually is winning there might still be a lot of doubt swirling around in the days and weeks to follow and i think the bigger point is to remember you mentioned earlier how america is sick i think it's important member that trump to continue this metaphor is a symptom not a cause that that you know when the president is your guy you're very happy that he has all the power and he's not your guy you want the power taken away and donald trump really has ripped off the band-aid and underneath is a lot of problems have been festering united states for

a very long time but only now happen to be affecting or being felt by a majority of americans have been felt by other groups of americans for a very very long time i think those are bigger issues for the united states has to deal with he will lose in disruption he's a most disruption and also it. nothing's been one of the constant the constant themes of the recent years on the trumpet. i think what we're going to be looking at in the next. we're going to leave you there we've been talking about the u.s. election about trump about the i'm done making how it's having an impact impact whether it will continue to have an impact thanks for joining us if you've enjoyed the show as much as i have come back next week.

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one continent. 700000000 people. with their own personal stories. europe. we explore every day life for. what europeans fear and what they hope for. the goose only euro. 90 minutes on d. w. . my 1st vice like moses sewing machine. where i come from women are almost by this ocean for something as simple as learning how to write a bicycle isn't. since i was a little girl i wanted to have a bicycle of my home and it took me years to understand there's. finally they gave

up invention by me and i say this but it returns because sewing machine sewing i suppose was more appropriate for girls than writing i'm biased as now i want to reach out to those woman back home who are bound by their duties and social norms and inform their own dead basic rights my name is them out of the homes and they're worth. the funny some gensler coronavirus pandemic. where does science stand. and what the new findings have researchers and. information background to. the corona update comes with 19 special. monday to friday on g.w. . touch.

base is the w. news a lot of a from berlin and germany's capital is declared a coronavirus hot spots as the number of cases in berlin apos as a key threshold tougher restrictions are already being introduced it's also coming up on the show in indonesia violent protests against a new labor law that's immense to boost an ailing economy police arrest.