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donald trump jr

In the misinformation age, it's important to understand that not all misinformation is fake. Some of it fabricated out of thin air, but more often than not, it includes legitimate data that is either misread, misunderstood, or misrepresented.

Such is the case with Donald Trump Jr.'s ridiculous claim on Fox News that COVID-19 deaths are

"These people are truly morons," Trump Jr. said without a hint of irony, before explaining to Ingraham how we "went through the CDC data" and came to the conclusion that the COVID-19 death number "is almost nothing." He said, "We've gotten control of this thing, we understand how it works, they have the therapeutics to be able to death with this."

"Look at my Instagram," he added. "It's gone to almost nothing."

Anyone who pays any attention at all to daily death tolls from the virus knows that the idea that deaths are "almost nothing" is simply false on its face. We have regularly had between 500 and 1000 deaths per day for months, and those numbers have begun to climb again in recent weeks. In fact we had over 1000 deaths yesterday, the day he tried to make this claim. So what the hell is Jr. talking about?


We could just brush him off as an idiot and move along, but the problem is there are millions of people who will watch, listen, and believe him. He says his numbers are from the CDC, after all. So let's take a look at what he shared on his Instagram.

Looking at the first chart he shared of weekly death numbers, we see that deaths spiked, dropped, went back up in the summer, then have tapered off since—but with a huge drop in the past few weeks.

The second chart puts those weekly death numbers up against the weekly case counts. Judging by this chart, it appears that while cases have gone up (because of more testing, according to Jr., which is only very partially true) deaths have plummeted.

So what's going on here?

The data Jr. is using is the CDC's weekly provisional death count, not the current recorded death count. And that distinction makes his conclusion 100% wrong.

The CDC provisional death count only counts a death once death certificate paperwork is fully processed. That process can take anywhere from one to eight weeks, which is clearly explained on the CDC website that Jr. got the data from. So the most recent weeks in his chart aren't up-to-date at all.

There's even a big blue box at the top of the page that says, "Note: Provisional death counts are based on death certificate data received and coded by the National Center for Health Statistics as of October 30, 2020. Death counts are delayed and may differ from other published sources (see Technical Notes). Counts will be updated periodically."

In fact, if you look at the numbers posted today for the last two months compared to the numbers in his chart, they've all gone up, because more death certificates for those weeks have been processed. That's how this chart works. The data is incomplete, especially in recent weeks.

So yeah, Jr. is using real CDC data, but he's drawing completely the wrong conclusion from it.

Now, perhaps that's a result of not understanding it (which is a problem if you are going on national television as a mouthpiece for the White House during a pandemic). Perhaps it's a result of neglecting to read the whole web page and just pulling numbers from the chart (which is also a problem if you're trying to speak authoritatively while calling other people morons). Or perhaps it's an intentional misrepresentation (which is a problem for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that it could lead to more dead Americans).

While it's tempting to lean toward Don Jr.'s incompetence, there's one detail that makes me wonder if it was purposeful. Donald Trump Jr. shared this information on his Instagram, but not on Facebook (at least not that I could find). The reason that's suspect is that people can't click on links on Instagram. In fact, if they're using the mobile app, which is how the vast majority of people use Instagram, you can't even copy and paste the links, so it's very difficult to get to the website he cites. On Facebook, the CDC links in his share text would have shown up as clickable links, and maybe—just maybe—some of his readers would bother checking his accuracy for themselves.

People using the provisional death count erroneously isn't new. I wrote about it several months ago, when a claim kept going around that the CDC had lowered its death count. It hadn't. People were just confusing the provisional death count numbers with the real-time death count and running with their conspiracy theories.

So when Trump Jr. shares his charts and asks on Instagram, "Why isn't the ACTUAL data from the CDC being discussed?" he needs to know that it is. This data just isn't what he thinks it is.

And when he says, "I guess they can't rule you with fear if they tell you the truth," I just want to bang my head on my desk and then burn down the entire internet so that we don't have to be subjected to the Trump family's misinformation and absurd gaslighting any longer.

Happy voting, everyone.

These days, anyone with a relationship to Donald Trump — personal or professional, good or bad — is probably treating social media like a minefield.

Not only are those near him subject to criticisms, but also jokes or even pleas to let reason prevail during this tumultuous time.

Donald Trump Jr. got all three when he decided recently to follow comedic actor Seth Rogen on Twitter.


Rogen was quick to notice his prominent new follower, and the Canadian-born U.S. resident wasn’t about to let this direct line to the president slip through his fingers.

So he reached out in a tweet that’s so in keeping with his on-screen persona that you might as well read it in his voice:

"Hey bro, quick Q..."

Subsequently, Rogen — realizing that perhaps a message of this gravity couldn’t be encapsulated in 140 characters — reached out to Trump Jr. with a direct message, both clarifying and reiterating his request:

"Do me a solid, Broseph..."

Despite not receiving a response from the president’s son (or not sharing one if he did), Rogen then took things a step further, offering unsolicited advice on matters of policy and personnel in the Trump administration:

Let’s all hold out hope for a response, then a dialogue, then the announcement of Seth Rogen as a special advisor to the president.

More

A quick and easy guide to the differences between Skittles and refugees.

Donald Trump Jr. posted a meme comparing refugees to Skittles. There's more to it than you may think.

On Sept. 19, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. posted a picture of a bowl of skittles that sent the Internet spiraling.

Some people looked at the image and saw Syrian refugees. Others looked at the meme and were like, "Wait, what? Those are clearly a bowl of fruit-flavored candy."

And, look, I get it! To the untrained eye it is a hard distinction to make. On the surface, Skittles and Syrian refugees seem like they have so much in common.

Don't worry. I'm here to help. Here's a quick primer on how to tell the two apart:

These are Skittles, a bite-sized, chewy, fruit-flavored candy.

Photo by Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images.

These are refugees, actual human beings fleeing conflict and persecution.

Syrian Kurdish people at the border between Syria and Turkey. Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images.

These are Skittles, which come a variety of flavors, including original, tropical, sour, and wild berry.

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images.

These are refugees. Over half of the world's estimated 21.3 million refugees are under the age of 18.

A Syrian Kurdish woman and her daughter near the Syria border at the southeastern town of Suruc. Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images.

These are Skittles, a brand with nearly 24 million Facebook fans.

A portrait of NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and his family, made out of delicious Skittles. Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images.

These are refugees. Before being admitted to the U.S., refugees undergo an extensive vetting process that can last months.

A Kurdish refugee woman in a camp in Suruc. Photo by Gokhan Sahin/Getty Images.

These are Skittles. They debuted in the U.K. back in 1974. Five years later, they made their way to the U.S.

Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images.

This is a refugee. The odds of an American dying in an act of terrorism committed by a refugee are actually just 1 in 3.64 billion a year.

On the flip side, the odds of an American dying in an act of terrorism committed by a U.S. citizen are 1 in 20 million.

A child from Turkey is kept warm after arriving on a raft to the island of Lesbos. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

These are Skittles. Since 1994, their slogan has been "Taste the rainbow."

Photo by iStock.

These are refugees. They're coming to America for safety, even though anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased as much as 78% over the past year in the U.S., the highest rate since the aftermath of 9/11. Just under half of U.S.-bound refugees are Muslim.

Syrian refugees and community leaders join together for a #RefugeesWelcome Thanksgiving. Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for MoveOn.org.

These are Skittles. Since 2009, they've been vegan.

Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images.

This is a refugee. Politicized, anti-refugee speech has gotten so out of hand that the UN is addressing that very issue this week.

A Syrian woman after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near the town of Gevgelija. Photo by Robert Atansovski/AFP/Getty Images.

How'd you do? Could you tell them all apart?

Seriously, though, there's a big problem with Trump Jr.'s meme and the imagery it evoked. It's about far more than comparing real human people to fruit-flavored candy.

This type of "it only takes one" mentality is designed to create fear of the unknown in readers (and, perhaps more importantly, in voters). It also has a really horrific origin involving Nazis.

Luckily, there are things we can do about this political propaganda. Namely, we can resist these politicized attempts to make us feel afraid of what we don't know.

Empathy is sometimes all we have in this world. It's what connects a man in Des Moines to a woman in Aleppo; it's what brings together a child from Boise and a teen from Kabul. It's what makes us human, and it's why we need to fight back against the forces that try to strip that humanity from us.

Stay strong, fight the urge to give in to shameless fear-mongering, and above all, stay empathetic.

And if you ever find yourself struggling to tell the difference between refugees and Skittles again, the good people at Mars came up with a handy, easy-to-remember tip to tell them apart:

ICYMI, Donald Trump Jr. gave a speech at the Republican National Convention in which he dismissed public schools and their teachers.

Trump Jr. throwing shade on public schools. Image via Patsy Error/YouTube.


Here are just a few choice phrases from that particular segment:

"Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they are stalled on the ground floor. They are like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students."

Needless to say, it ruffled the feathers of many educators at both public and private institutions for a number of reasons, perhaps the most significant being that he spoke from no experience.

Trump Jr. grew up in a privileged household and went to The Hill School, a preparatory school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. After that, he attended The University of Pennsylvania — another privately owned institution.

Simply put, Trump Jr. has no idea what it's like to be educated in public schools.

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

Thankfully, one incredibly eloquent teacher decided to call out Trump Jr. on his misinformed speech.

Dani Bostick is a Latin teacher at a public school in Winchester, Virginia, who just happened to have the RNC on in the background while working on lesson plans.

After she heard what Trump Jr. had to say about her profession, she simply had to respond.

Bostick wrote on The Huffington Post about how dedicated she and her colleagues are to the kids they teach despite their "pitifully low" salaries. She wrote about how time in the classroom is such a small part of the hours teachers put into their work. And she stressed how "reckless" it is to say public schools serve teachers instead of students because it's simply not true. One quote sums her sentiments up pretty perfectly:

"Tenure or no tenure, union or no union, teachers dedicate our lives to students. Or, as we teachers call them 'our kids.' ... They are our kids because we are as invested in their academic growth and personal development as if they were our own literal children."

Once her post was up, teachers of the world (well, at least those on Twitter) united behind her.



Erin Johnston, a public school teacher from North Carolina, responded succinctly to the Democratic Party's "fear" of free-market education:

"The only thing I fear is yet another politician running their mouth about how education is broken while at the same time passing legislation to break it even more because it gets them elected."


Boom! Mic drop!

There is a good lesson to be learned here that can be summed up by a quote my high school English teacher had on her classroom wall.

"I say, there is no darkness but ignorance." — William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night"

If you're going to trash talk the people who educate others, you'd best do your research; otherwise they'll take you to church.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.