Oy

Just how far will Cult45 go to cover their asses on the COVID-19 thing?

Way fuckin' far.

Mother Jones:

This month, Stephen Miller, the extremist anti-immigrant Trump adviser who has promoted white nationalist ideas, lost a relative to the coronavirus pandemic, and his uncle tells Mother Jones that the Trump administration is partly to blame for this death.

On July 4, David Glosser, the brother of Miller’s mother, posted a Facebook note announcing the death of his mother, Ruth Glosser, who was Miller’s maternal grandmother:

This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old. She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness. Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.

David Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist and passionate Trump critic who has publicly decried Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, and he contends that Trump’s initial “lack of a response” to the coronavirus crisis led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans who might have otherwise survived. In an interview, he says, “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting.”

In response to a request seeking comment from Miller, a White House spokesperson sent Mother Jones this statement:

This is categorically false, and a disgusting use of so-called journalism when the family deserves privacy to mourn the loss of a loved one. His grandmother did not pass away from COVID. She was diagnosed with COVID in March and passed away in July so that timeline does not add up at all. His grandmother died peacefully in her sleep from old age. I would hope that you would choose not to go down this road.

Glosser, a former health professional, posted his mother’s death announcement on a public Facebook page. Responding to the White House statement, he writes in an email, “Keeping the tragic facts about COVID deaths of our countrymen and women, young and old, from the American public serves no purpose other than to obscure the need for a coherent national, scientifically based, public health response to save others from this disease. My mother led a long, satisfying, productive life of family and community service. She had nothing to be ashamed of, and concealing her cause of death to offer ‘privacy’ to me, our family, her hundreds of relatives and friends, does nothing to assuage our regret at her loss.”

Moreover, Ruth Glosser’s death certificate—which her son shared with Mother Jones—lists her cause of death as “respiratory arrest” resulting from “COVID-19.”

Informed that Ruth Glosser’s death certificate cited COVID-19, the White House spokesperson replied, “Again, this is categorically false. She had a mile [sic] case of COVID-19 in March. She was never hospitalized and made a full and quick recovery.”
Miller has played a role in the Trump White House’s ineffectual response to the coronavirus crisis. He was credited with helping to write the Oval Office address Trump delivered on March 11 that was widely panned. In that speech, Trump branded the coronavirus as the “foreign virus” and downplayed the damage already caused by it. He hailed his administration’s actions regarding the growing pandemic, ignoring his recent and repeated efforts to dismiss the threat posed by the virus. Trump announced in this speech that he would suspend all travel from Europe to the United States—a statement that caused panic, as Americans overseas rushed back to the United States and ended up in crammed and unsafe conditions at US airports. (The ban only applied to foreign citizens.) In the months since, Miller has attempted to exploit the pandemic to implement anti-immigration measures.