Let’s Call It Trumpvirus

[Auburn85 434]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opinion/coronavirus-trump.html

 

Quote

 

So, our Coronavirus Czar is going to be … Mike Pence. Feeling more secure?

“I know full well the importance of presidential leadership,” the vice president said as soon as he was introduced in his new role.

Totally qualified. First criteria for every job in this administration is capacity for praising the gloriousness of our commander in chief.

Yeah, when you think of Mike Pence you maybe don’t think about Pandemic Fighter Supreme. But as President Trump pointed out repeatedly, he has already run Indiana.

Well, it probably could have been worse. Having a czar does make you feel there’s somebody in charge. At least Trump didn’t come before the cameras and announce solemnly, “Today I’m asking every American to cross your fingers.”

Our president had to be going crazy over a problem that involves both declining stock prices and germs. This is the guy, after all, who thinks shaking hands is “barbaric,” who is followed around by aides bearing sanitizer. During his press conference he told the story of a fever-ridden supporter who gave him a hug. Do you think it was an apocryphal fantasy? Either way, the idea has been haunting him forever.

Meanwhile, he’s come up with a totally new explanation for the stock market skid. It turns out investors were not frightened so much by the pandemic as the Democratic debate.

“I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democrat candidates standing on that stage making fools out of themselves,” Trump told reporters.

 

Plus that virus thing is … not necessarily a big deal. What really “shocked” him, Trump said, was his discovery that “the flu in our country kills 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year.”

So the problems are the Democrats and the flu. The answers are Mike Pence and … reminding the public once again that Nancy Pelosi’s district has a big homeless problem.

Earlier in the day Trump argued, via tweet, that despite the expressions of concern by the evil media and “incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades,” the government is perfectly prepared to handle the coronavirus. Which he misspelled “caronavirus.” But nobody’s perfect.

The president had been saying everything is totally under controlfor some time. (“It’s one person coming in from China.”) The whole administration picked up the cry. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, 82, overcame his habit of dozing off at meetings long enough to tell Fox Business Network that the disease would “accelerate the return of jobs” from overseas.

Trump totally agrees. “What it’s gonna do is keep people home, and they’re going to travel to places we have,” he said.

See? The virus thing is a bonus.

The run-up to the Pence unveiling had not been exactly calming for citizens who wanted to have faith in competent White House oversight. Barack Obama used to have special epidemic-watching groups just in case this kind of crisis developed. One was headed by the highly regarded Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, who got sent packing by John Bolton. Another infectious disease expert, Tom Bossert, suddenly vanished from the Department of Homeland Security in 2018, presumably also at the hand of John You-know-who.

If Bolton’s memoir ever makes it into print, do you think it’ll have a chapter called “My War on Pandemic Fighters?” OK, probably not.

Virus Week hasn’t really provided a whole lot of comfort to citizens who wanted to believe the president’s replacements were super high quality.

The nation got its first real look at Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, who appeared before a Senate subcommittee and admitted he had no idea how the virus was transmitted among humans, exactly how dangerous it was, or … pretty much anything.

 

 

[DKW 86 7,726]

 

[bigbird 60,701]

13 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

 

But...but...but...

[DKW 86 7,726]

[DKW 86 7,726]

 

[I_M4_AU 8,600]

Like most other things, waiting to get the facts would be nice.

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

 

[homersapien 11,812]

Fact Checking Trump’s Coronavirus Press Conference

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/factchecking-trumps-coronavirus-press-conference/

 

 

 

 

[homersapien 11,812]

Trump’s coronavirus conflict: Science vs. politics

The spread of coronavirus is presenting a management and messaging challenge for the Trump administration unlike any other crisis.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/26/trumps-coronavirus-credibility-voters-investors-117743

[SaturdayGT 719]

[SaltyTiger 8,240]

4 hours ago, homersapien said:

The spread of coronavirus is presenting a management and messaging challenge for the Trump administration unlike any other crisis.

No it isn't

[homersapien 11,812]

15 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

No it isn't

I don't think you even read the piece.

[DKW 86 7,726]

[SaltyTiger 8,240]

8 hours ago, homersapien said:

I don't think you even read the piece.

I did read it.

[alexava 6,974]

All y’all shitgibbons should go to Chiner and lick door knobs to show everybody this ain’t sheyet. 

[Grumps 3,706]

18 minutes ago, alexava said:

All y’all shitgibbons should go to Chiner and lick door knobs to show everybody this ain’t sheyet. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

6 minutes ago, Grumps said:

I'll take my chances with the Coronavirus.

[homersapien 11,812]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/02/trump-has-exposed-huge-weakness-democrats-should-pounce/

"........If President Trump and his propagandists get their way, no one will ever raise a peep of criticism over his handling of coronavirus — thus placing our government’s response to a looming public health emergency beyond scrutiny entirely. Protecting Trump, apparently, is a higher priority than protecting the country.

Fortunately, Democrats aren’t standing down. Over the weekend, the presidential candidates rolled out expansive new criticisms of Trump’s handling of the outbreak, each tailored to their own story. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg released a three-minute ad criticizing it.

But there’s still more that Democrats could be saying. That’s because Trump has exposed a major leadership weakness, one that goes well beyond just the coronavirus response.

The weakness in question: Trump’s chronic inability to admit that anything on his watch is less than stupendously wonderful. This pathology is deeply ingrained in this presidency. It infects everything from his depictions of the economy to his insane demands of border officials, in addition to (as we’re now seeing) the government’s handling of a public health crisis.

Highlighting this provides a way to integrate criticism of Trump’s management failures with an indictment of his hideous character flaws —his towering dishonesty and megalomania. In this telling, those failings are not just the latest ugly installment of the Daily Trump Show. They’re also shortcomings that threaten major real-world consequences.

A debate over Trump’s handling of the epidemic is one that his propagandists badly want to avoid — so they’re casting all criticism of it as only reflecting a desire to harm Trump himself. Numerous Republicans and right-wing media figures have made variations of this claim.

Perhaps worst of all, Donald Trump Jr. is claiming that Democrats want “millions” to die of coronavirus to end Trump’s “streak of winning.” In so doing, Trump the Younger usefully unmasked his reprehensible instinct to see the prospect of mass U.S. deaths mainly through the prism of how this would impact the president politically.

And yet, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Vice President Pence actually defended this sentiment as “understandable.” Why? Because it was a response to … criticism of Trump, which is apparently so intolerable that it justifies even this.

This cultish prioritization of protecting Trump above all else, of course, flows from the tone that Trump himself has set. But the case that Democrats can now make is that this very megalomania is itself corroding the government’s ability to handle this crisis.

 

Trump’s megalomania poses a danger

The Post’s extraordinary weekend report on our evolving response to the crisis underscores the point. Trump badly wanted to minimize coronavirus’s seriousness — it was rattling the markets, which Trump views as a crucial gauge of his reelection chances.

And so, Trump fumed as he watched his own health officials inform the country about the seriousness of the threat, considering this to be alarmist. He raged against the media for treating him unfairly, confirming again that everything gets filtered through how it personally impacts him.

As The Post details, that’s the crucial backstory to what happened next: Trump contradicted his own officials by downplaying the dangers posed. And Trump put Pence in charge of the response after declining to bring in an outside coordinating “czar," in part because he worried that this person might be disloyal — that is, that he or she would tell the country the truth in a way that didn’t reflect well on him.

This is likely to have real consequences.

With a second American dying from coronavirus, officials now fear that the spread on the West Coast due purely to transmission in the community, not through foreign travel, may have been far more severe than we knew, and may have gone undetected.

In a widely cited Twitter thread, Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, explained that Trump’s “preferences,” his rage at those who suggested the outbreak might be more serious than he wished it to be, probably colored the administration’s response in subtle ways, potentially leading to this lapse in detection.

Time will tell whether this reading is correct. But we already know Trump’s megalomaniacal insistence on making everything about him — and his intertwined belief that he can magically mold reality to his benefit — surely threatens to hamper our response in untold ways.

[alexava 6,974]

21 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

You left out a lot of statistics. 

[AUDub 11,424]

On 2/29/2020 at 10:29 AM, DKW 86 said:

Just an FYI, this is fake. 

[AUFAN78 4,060]

22 hours ago, alexava said:

All y’all shitgibbons should go to Chiner and lick door knobs to show everybody this ain’t sheyet. 

Let us know how that works out for you bro. 

[DKW 86 7,726]

3 hours ago, AUDub said:

Just an FYI, this is fake. 

Been reading on it now. I got it off of a CNBC Link....wow. 

Apologies to everyone. Seems even some normally good sites got took on that one. 

[TexasTiger 13,556]

On 2/29/2020 at 11:57 AM, I_M4_AU said:

Like most other things, waiting to get the facts would be nice.

 

Indeed.

[Grumps 3,706]

10 hours ago, homersapien said:

"........If President Trump and his propagandists get their way, no one will ever raise a peep of criticism over his handling of coronavirus — thus placing our government’s response to a looming public health emergency beyond scrutiny entirely. Protecting Trump, apparently, is a higher priority than protecting the country.

I am pretty sure that President Trump and his minions don't expect the left and the media to stop criticizing him over his handling of ANYTHING. The rest of this sounds like the sky is falling again.

[SaltyTiger 8,240]

On 3/1/2020 at 7:46 PM, alexava said:

All y’all shitgibbons should go to Chiner and lick door knobs to show everybody this ain’t sheyet. 

Mrs. Salty cooked Chicken Chow Mein last night. I was scared of it.

[SaltyTiger 8,240]

21 hours ago, homersapien said:

Trump’s megalomaniacal insistence on making everything about him

Brother Homer you do an excellent job of helping Trump "make everything about him".