and beethoven is for. beethoven is for every. beethoven 2020. 5th anniversary here on d w. after days of uncertainty don't just 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 coded 19 donate their lives with a 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 cove it 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 with us is 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 the warm welcome to william blue cross u.s. native and d.-w. news reporter he believes that trump's 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 telson from i don't 1st question of 1st

impression you talk about trump's strange corona show what is your response your personal response to that showed to that presentation that we've seen. yeah i mean it's it's. a sort of movie type of type of incident. in the middle of a real pandemic and as you said in the beginning 200000 people have died and then he you know 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 fear through the kind of a performance who will do what is he trying to achieve donald trump with i mean that he's a superman that he's been 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 get the corner virus is costing the 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 hole to show that he's putting all of 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 a miss universe you know really thrive 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 do we know do we know you know i mean you're a doctor and. when you you know with your doctors are what are you seeing bullet holes would you give donald trump of 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 just don't really know what is your guess is he going to be able to fight the company into the end go 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 that is 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 you know maybe also quickly because he had every medicine even experimental mother's medicines that others can get and he was lucky. 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 loners 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 the danger to it but i had to do it i stood out front i led. turns in front of the president the president said don't let koby dominate don't let you take over your life remember 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 that i'm from michigan and this is a state that donald trump crucially won in the lax election after it having gone to democrats in the previous 3 elections you know. michigan was the 3rd worst hit

state in the beginning of the corona crisis so when i talk to people who live in the suburbs of detroit they they need to have 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 the polls are showing both nationwide and 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 tide is against donald trump yes the numbers are in favor of joe biden are they enough democrats been saying since the convention actually since coming to 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 trump and all the supporters know the reality is on our

side it's not going to be enough for there just to be a technical win biden and the democrats. a real hard when you're maybe akin to what we saw on rate with reagan in his re-election in the eighty's and. one of the statements that i made it into the show as i indicated that perhaps there is a sense among many americans they feel defensive contempt for their lives and struggles from the president is not going to he's not going to help to create a mood will 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 and 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 is possible and try to dream big which of those americans are voters going to see or enough voters as i just said enough voters are 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 him and his components and he he really gets this group done. going and he emotional as what he says and it's all about we can do with us together and 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 that 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 amala ticks are human and humans are emotional so this works well and water almost appears to be a self destructive mode president trump has sparked so the controversy by blocking talks with the democrats 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 one theory when it gets a little warbird miraculously goes away 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 i said supposing it were the way the body can which you can do either through the skin or. in some other way. 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 it was i don't know i don't wear masks like him every time you see him he's got a mask you could be speaking 200 feet away from him he shows up with the biggest

mask i've ever seen. biden the coward versus the superman. will this strategy. the work. question trumps the superman by the cow is he going to work the strategy now i 6 think he was maybe on track to have a little bit of success with that and then he got infected himself i mean it's really the game changer in the narrative thus 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 for him 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. systematic science against superstition yeah yeah i mean what he's doing is. it's so typical difficult to watch how his scientific advisers tell him one thing and he does another he politicizes the measures against the coronavirus ever on 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 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 worm were 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 that 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 i mean 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 i think 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 the 1st 2nd because to you i know that you have said that he's not just the president who is ill but the presidency that is 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 effect of donald trump 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. 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 and 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 if 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 president c. so we've seen this in the past you know with woodrow wilson with f.d.r. you know major major events happened 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 in history has been america's side for a long time we don't know how long that's going to last and pursuing this thought still. we begin with perhaps the president himself is a little sick perhaps the presidency as you know seek the procedures german

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 come to america be a resurgence society a resurgent country politically medically in terms of the health of its people coming 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 endemic right now but also concerning the house system. having also. also for

workers. getting and health insurance and things like that so that it's really and economically there has to love a few times it's a long way there's a lot of work to do we've seen we've seen the vice presidential debate taking place in utah mike pence on the one hand 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 day president donald trump has put the health of america 1st before there were more than 5 cases in the united states or 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. what do you make you know about defense of president trump and his strategy it's a nice try. but there 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 terribly dangerous ok well mark penn's was up against a mother who's coming for your son it's a 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. well i can live my so if you sent your alarm clock to be in the morning to watch the debate what did you make. 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 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 talk themself is. and we should be careful not to trip over the bar that we set so low for so. you know pence themself as test describe himself

as rush limbaugh decathlon he was a far right conservative radio show host so he has that call that says is often forgotten about right come on who is was the attorney general and mike pence was a conservative radio show talk shows and not even 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 ministration 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 generally from the united states and other parts of the world trying to bring back manufacturing with a lot and a lot of these working class blue collar town 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 what with 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 often often be his own worst enemy he's benefited from the coronavirus by having fewer opportunities to 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 to be big and 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 from 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 from. such a simplistic question but i wanted to see you out it was simple and it's only when you see you 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 and 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 therefore i do think biden it's biden's race to lose at this point . you know i also think so because 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 that weakness that cost him

the wind there's definitely no way i'm going to be put on record for saying one way or the. 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 so doubt into the results 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 to look at 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 must disruption and also. i mean. i think one of the constant to come some themes of the recent years under trump and i think you could be what we're going to be looking at in the next. we're going to leave you there would be talking about the u.s. election about trump about the time demick and 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. as you. the be. the

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this is good of you news live from berlin europe sees a surge in new coronavirus cases tougher restrictions taking place and the capital berlin and across germany to stem the tide of new infections health experts warn hospitals could be overrun if the trend continues also coming up. germany marks one year since a confessed neo nazi attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of hama killing 2 people the anniversary comes as germany's foreign minister calls breitling terror the greatest danger.