Coronavirus … who on earth might have predicted this?
A genius? A stable genius? An unstable genius? A dull knife? A village missing its idiot?
“Nobody could have predicted this,” said Donald Trump on March 30, 2020 during one of his propaganda appearances on Fox News. Of course, he also said on March 17, 2020, that he knew the coronavirus would result in a pandemic “long before it was called a pandemic.” Only a stable genius can hold two such opposing ideas in his head at once. Or, is that what a stable psychotic does?
The Washington Post reported yesterday that in January and February of 2020, Trump received more than a dozen classified briefings that warned about the coronavirus. What did he do? Jack Squat. Yes, he banned travel from China on January 31, but that ban was illusory. As Ron Klain, the White House Ebola response coordinator under Obama, said “We have a travel Band-Aid right now. First, before it was imposed, 300,000 people came here from China in the previous month. So the horse is out of the barn.” The Trump travel ban was a joke. A complete an utter pile of steaming bullshit that Trump dumped on the White House lawn and said “Look, a beautiful pile of shit I just created! No more coronavirus is possible because I did this!”
Yet, despite all the warnings in January and February, by late February, Trump was downplaying the whole coronavirus thing. I guess he thought his alleged ban of nearly nobody coming from China was enough.
February 24: Trump Tweet - “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
On this day the White House asked Congress for 1.25 billion to help fund the government’s response to Covid 19 and the stock market plummeted.
February 25: In a trip to New Dehli, India, Trump said that “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.” He also said, “Now they have it, they have studied it, they know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.” Later the White House said Trump meant the United States was close to a vaccine for Ebola, not coronavirus. Really? They think we are that stupid? Answer: yes, they do.
February 26: At a press conference in the Briefing Room, Trump said “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: At a reception he said “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” At that time, the CDC was warning that Covid 19 would spread across the United States.
You get the sense that Trump knows the thing is bad but just can’t bring himself to tell anyone. He is untouched by this stuff. He lives in his own happy land where he won’t let anyone with any chance of the coronavirus near him. He knows it’s bad but he ignores the truth. People will suffer. That suffering is right in front of him, yet he just doesn’t seem to care, he only cares about himself and reelection and that someone else is to blame. This self-centered nature may be what actually does him in this time around.
While nothing seems to change Trump’s approval rating - it hovers at all times in the low 40s. There are signs that things may be starting to crack. Republicans are running around sticking their fingers in the dike that is Donald Trump in an attempt to hold back the onslaught of truth and misery that they fear may wash away the Republican majority in the Senate. This fall there are thirty-five seats up for re-election. Of these, twenty-three seats are Republicans. If the Democrats gain four seats, they would control the Senate.
I’d say there are four seats that are in Republican hands that are in serious jeopardy: Susan Collins (ME), Martha McSally (AZ), Cory Gardner (CO), and Thom Tillis (NC). The only Democrat that appears to be truly vulnerable is Doug Jones of Alabama. But, these Republicans also appear to have a more difficult road than anticipated: Kelly Loeffler (GA), Joni Ernst (IA), Mitch McConnell (KY), and Steve Daines (MT).
As Mitch McConnell said just the other day on Fox Propganda News Radio, “It’s going to be a fight to the finish. Sort of like a knife fight in an alley.”
I hope the Democrats bring a gun to this knife fight. And, surprisingly, the bullet in that gun might just be the way Donald Trump and his administration of misfit toys have handled the response to the virus, by abdicating their duties and giving the burden to state governors. When people like McConnell start telling states to file for bankruptcy, you gotta wonder if when the shit hits the fan a lot harder in states that have ignored science and those states begin to suffer, that they are going to be happy relying on their cheapskate Republican governor’s to save them because they won’t have the resources to make that happen. Will the federal government step in then and play favorites, sending money and medical help based on political affiliation? Probably. The question will be, how do states who are not treated as well, in fact treated unequally, respond.
The Constitution does not allow Trump to dole out federal monies based on who is a political ally of the President. Trump may have violated the First, Fifth and Tenth Amendments already based on his numerous threats to Democrat governors. For a more detailed discussion of this topic, read this LawFare post. The question becomes: what to do about Trump’s behavior and his administration’s unequal treatment of states? There won’t be a quick fix. Congress must engage in oversight and states should take legal action. But, in the end, the best answer is to vote Trump out in November and take down as many of his Republican lackey’s as possible.