Tapper to GOP governor: Does your state think this is a hoax?

CNN's Jake Tapper speaks with Gov. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) about Nebraska's battle with the coronavirus outbreak as well as President Trump's response to the pandemic. #CNN #News

78 comments

    1. Their greed is going to trash everything that we’ve accomplished so far & it is going to cause us to have to start over. Lunatics.

    1. I have to cross the state line to go to the VA. But that’s OK because the VA may be getting these veterans coming back from places with the virus,..

    2. In Australia, we have closed off roads between states (except 2 at this point) apart from essential supplies with police at the borders. We had only a few day’s notice for people to get back to their home state. That created a sense of the severity of the situation, now people are looking within their own states of isolating down the chain in towns/communities/homes/themselves. It needs to start big to trickle down.

  1. In 3 weeks, he’s going to be singing a different tune, just like everyone else on the front lines.

    1. lilly pad you’re a bit like the man that stood on his roof as the waters were rushing over him saying the Lord will provide, after turning away offers of help from people with boats. He was expecting some sort of divine intervention and ended up drowning. When he got the chance to ask God why he let him drown, God said – I sent you three people with boats! Well God has sent us clever people who study science and immunology and they are the ones we should be listening to, not greedy politicians!

    2. You are correct. I don’t want Nebraska to suffer, but Omaha is a large, metropolitan area. It has a military installation with folks who are from and have traveled all over the world, there are large corporations like Mutual of Omaha headquartered there, with executives traveling to and fro, etc. Lots of people work in the city, live in the suburbs and go to see family in rural parts. He’s going to want, need and desire help from the federal government if things get worse, and they might just.

    3. Your all wrong. Virus cases are kept low in Nebraska, I’m a Democrat, because our Governor immediately started working on keeping Covid-19 cases down. Everyone who were in contact with those who had symptoms and tested positive were tested.

    4. Crimson Halo Sorry, you’re not getting it either! We’re all in this together. What you or your family and friends do in this situation has a direct impact on everyone else you with whom you come into contact. You could be directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of dozens of people. Usually the more vulnerable like the elderly, but also anyone with a compromised immune system. This is not a hoax or a joke, people all over the world are sick and dying and all some people can do is take pot shots at each other and think they have won an argument. Well nobody wins in this crisis. Have any of you got relatives who are in the medical profession? Ask them what is going on!

    1. @Forza Juve You only have to look at the idiot and you’ll know Its as dumb as the Orange Shrek.
      In the Un-united States govt, they’re pretty easy to spot.

    2. They are refusing to test people here in Lincoln Nebraska, so our numbers are bullshit. They only test if you end up needing hospitalization. So if anything, our numbers either reflect how our immune systems are here, or they’re not testing new dead who it wiped out to fast to bother testing. This is a red state, with alot of Trump supporters. My brother being one of them. And he believed Trump when he called the hype a hoax. And still hangs on his every word. Our stores in Lincoln are packed with people every day. And while I appreciate Ricketts efforts for the most part. He’s as red as they come. We voted for Medicaid expansion in 2018 and he still hasn’t implemented that. He and his red colleagues blocked the vote relentlessly for years before that. He sent our law enforcement to north Dakota to help the oil companies batter the protesters at standing rock. He’s got money invested in the pipeline. And when his family started a super pack against Trump in 2016, Trump insinuated that his family shouldn’t go against him given what Ricketts has to hide. So consequently he’s not going to speak against Trump like the other governors had. As I said, I do commend his efforts thus far. But even a good farmer knows to separate his cattle from a diseased stock. Are the people in our state taking this seriously? Mostly no. My supervisor just came back from Colorado and is at work. We’re f*cked.

    3. @SuperTROOPER469

      Can confirm everything stated above.

      I too live in Lincoln, NE. I also work for the State.

      Lemme be very clear: We’re 100% fucked.

  2. Once the thing that is slowing down the spread shows promise, we will stop doing the thing that is slowing down the spread.
    Genius.

    1. Does it show promise? I haven’t seen any flattening of the growth in US. Actually not even Italy has gotten to that point yet… and they’re weeks ahead

    2. @Vlad Cirus What they are saying is that once the curve starts to flatten they will stop the thing that flattens it…(shutdown)

      No nothing has even started to flatten. The curve is still moving up exponentially.
      It took the death number two months to get to 1000. It took another two days to get to 2000.

    1. Yeah, right? I mean, Trump is full blown proof you can have no brain and hold the highest office in the land.

    1. @lilly pad – just so long as you have some way to mop up the ‘free radicals’ – who are being selfish and stupid – people like that _do_ exist..

    2. Here in New Zealand – the whole country is on lockdown for a month (day 5 has dawned)
      and the advice is to act as if you have covid-19, stay in your household ‘bubble’ as much as possible, be considerate and kind, stay in contact by contactless means – once this ‘cat got out of the bag’ the recession was gonna happen no matter what – this way we save lives and strain on essential services to better manage this long term.

    3. @Ian Dalziel You can’t control people in a free society, you can direct them to do what is right and obey the laws.

    4. Unfortunately that is not true. Otherwise the hospitals would be packed already. It´s not like the healthy air of Nebraska secures mild symptoms, whereas New York air sends you directly to a ventilator.

    1. @Lor D ur more concerned with immigrants when theres literally republicans who are trying to give huge handouts to the wealthiest corporations (who dont need it)without oversight LMAOOO so it’s ok to give trillions in “socialist handouts” to corporations but how dare we give socialist handouts to the American people and perhaps u forgot ur history but AMERICA WAS BUILT ON THE BACKS OF IMMIGRANTS AND SLAVES and all the native Americans the “settlers” slaughtered when THEY invaded native american land LOLLLL

    2. @Travis Forde you Trumptard Minion quit spreading that Trumptard and Fox news lie. The 1st reported case was April 15th 2009. April 26th the government declared H1N1 a public health emergency. April 28th the 1st test was approved by the FDA. The CDC began shipping the test on May 1st. Unlike Trumptard Obama appointed people who knew how to handle a pandemic and didn’t lie or deny the virus. Now if you want to cherry pick and create your own facts Obama did mention in October that H1N1 was a public health emergency then yes you are right but by that time the committee was already 7 months in working on eliminating the virus. Now unlike your dear leader Trumptard who lied and denied the Coronavirus for over 2 months and was told by the WHO on January 24th that this virus was going to be severe if not taken seriously. Answer me this why didn’t Trumptard prepare for this virus and if Obama’s pandemic response that he put in place was so bad and obsolete then why after 3 years didn’t Trumptard put something better in place? Was it because he was to busy golfing. Maybe he was to busy tweeting lies. Maybe he was to busy dividing this country, spreading his hate, and shitting on the constitution.

    3. @Lor D is that also when politicians started selling stocks because they knew exactly how bad it was going to be?

    4. @Lor D when he caused a lot of chaos with his address that said insurance companies would cover both testing and treatment, only to have to walk it back is one example. The other is, he keeps saying a vaccine his coming soon, which then gets knocked down by one of the doctors in his own administration very soon after. He lies and misinforms… A lot. If was in a company he didn’t own, he’d be fired.

  3. He immediately starts playing partisan politics. He needs to resign. This is too important for inexperienced, moronic GOP governors.

    1. @Jim Patriot After the travel ban of people from China. What happened next? What was the next decisive thing Trump did? What was happening in Europe and the WHO during that time? What were the predictions and how it was going to spread at that time? Tell me why you don’t have enough ventilators now, 3 months after the initial WHO notification you still don’t have enough? The richest country in the world does not have enough – even though Healthcare is a 5th of the economy? That sounds like mismanagement to me, but go ahead. Tell me why the President is not to blame now, (2400 deaths so far) when your soooo ready to pin the blame on previous president for a similar event.

    2. @Jim Patriot One action is not a good indicator of his total response to this.

      Yes he shut down those flights but I suspect that had a lot more to do with seizing the opportunity to gain some leverage in his trade war with China than to actually protect the health of the American people. If you noticed at the beginning of the Euro travel ban he initially left the UK of the list. He has several businesses there and is friends with Boris Johnson. This seems like it may also be a move to benefit his personal interest than our health.

      You go to the hospital with a huge gash in your leg. Upon entering the ER they immediately apply a tourniquet to your leg. This is obviously a good thing. Now you wait. The doctors do nothing more. You continue to wait. You wait for days. Your leg starts to get infected. People start telling the hospital how bad your infection is getting. The hospital says “Everything is really under control” “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”. Things continue to get worse. People are screaming at the hospital to listen to them. The hospital says it’s a political hoax to make them look bad and insist they are doing a great job” Several more days go by and things are looking really grim. All of a sudden the hospital starts to take things seriously they proclaim “Nobody knew there would be an infection of this proportion.” “I just think this is something … that you can never really think is going to happen.” Now that you’ve made it to the operating room in much worse condition then you arrived weeks before the doctor says we don’t have enough tests. You wait days for tests, weeks for tests. When you ask the hospital about the lack of tests they reply “I don’t take responsibility at all”. More days pass. Finally you get a test and they can start to stitch up your leg. The Doctor is low on supplies including critically needed sutures. He leaves an urgent message asking the hospital for more sutures. They say “try getting it yourselves” “We are not a shipping clerk”. The doctor pleads for these needed supplies. The hospital says “I think they should be appreciative. Because you know what? When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the hospital It’s not right,” “I don’t call them back” By this point not only is your leg ready to fall off but it has infected many others including doctors and nurses. You find out that sutures that are not available for you have been shipped off to other countries by the hospital who claims they are not a shipping clerk and there still are not enough to sew your leg. You are close to this infection completely destroying you and the hospital has left you to die.

      When asked how the hospital would rate their performance on this they say “I’d rate it a 10. I think we’ve done a great job. And it started with the fact that we kept a very highly infected leg, despite all of the–even the professionals saying no, it’s too early to do that, we were very, very early with respect to the tourniquet. And we would have a whole different situation if we didn’t do that. I would rate it a very, very–I would rate ourselves and–and the professionals–I think the professionals have done a fantastic job.

      Yes the shutting down the flights was a good thing but the response after that has been terrible. One good action does not define the entire response. Don’t forget he also went golfing during this time.

      The Obama thing is irrelevant and and attempt to distract. Even if Obama was the worst president in the history of the world that does not mean Trump has done a good job. Whats next? Bringing up how badly the 1918 Spanish Flu was handled to defend Trump as well? How bout the Black Plague?

      I highly doubt you will have read this far so I’m not even sure why I bothered.

    3. @Jim Patriot Trump called it a hoax and said it would move from 15 cases to 0 cases by now and it would disappear like a miracle.

  4. #Trump party Governor has done a “couple of thousand tests”. So everyone in Nebraska can relax. Not

    1. @William Swenson From my study of past pandemics, June is a bit optimistic. I started counting down last Monday from 418 days. That’s a worst case scenario, but I don’t really think we’ll be out of the water before next year some time. As with many of my predictions, I always hope I’m wrong. I also predict that Trump will be reelected. We’re not coming out of this the same country as when we went in.

  5. When the entire WORLD is responding one way and you do something different ask yourself WHY!!!

    1. ​@Travis Forde Who’s talking about conventional wisdom? This is about empirical evidence showing what does or does not work and what is or is not necessary. Take Hungary for example, did the South Korean leadership need to grab power and suspend human rights in order to combat the outbreak? No. Did Benjamin Netanyahu need to need to spy on Israeli citizens’ cell phones or postpone his own corruption trial to combat the virus? No. Aspiring authoritarians around the world are using the lack of an accepted procedure for dealing with this sort of pandemic in order to seize power, including the Trump administration. The best way to make it clear what they are doing is to contrast it with what other countries who have successfully fought the pandemic have done.

  6. “One way or the other. You can either have the Federal Government do everything, or you can have the States do everything…”

    He knows, very well, that he’s just blowing false dichotomies up Jake’s butt. And when they need to do that, it’s an implicit admission that they know they’re wrong.

  7. Yes/No answer required.
    “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we did great things, blah, blah. Spin, spin. Meaningless twaddle. Blah, blah.
    It’s because of the sort of ‘leadership’ provided by self-concerned politicians (regardless of stripe) the human race will go down.

    1. “Everybody sucks so it doesnt matter who you elect” is EXACTLY how both Putin and Trump got elected. Politicians are not all the same. Open your eyes and vote – if they allow it.

    2. I’m from Nebraska and even though I’m not thrilled we have a Republican Governor, Pete Rickets does have everything under control. He started immediately putting guidelines in place to keep the virus interactions under control.

    3. Beenthere Donethat So did we in Ohio and we have over 1600 cases now so sure everything is under control

  8. It has been said once a death occurs the virus is already spreading heavily in a population. He isn’t being realistic.

    1. No, he seems to have the same attitude as someone who notices a cement truck barrelling towards him and chooses to not look at it in the hope that it will not strike him. Well, governor, you’ve left your state tied to the train tracks. Good luck with that strategy.

  9. What makes people think that areas with few current cases aren’t going to grow exponentially just like everywhere else? EVERY region now massively affected started out with only cases.

  10. Why am I not shocked that he wants to blame this on the governor’s. Republicans are going to be sorry in November if they think this isn’t trump’s incompetence amplified.

    1. @tmklunk If after all this you still support trump then you should be considered too mentally incompetent to vote.

    2. Oh how I wish you were right. Sadly, you won’t be. Trump will spin this as him being the victim and you know his base, who are ALL “victims”, will identify with him and vote for him. Another Electoral college win.

    3. @Jason Paul one day the Dems will get tired of the corruption and take drastic measures. People can only be pushed so far.

    4. @Kristina Carvalho You can say that now but one day all those decrepit old Retardicans will die. Then you’ll lose your racist majority. Then, bye Felicia.

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