Trump Has The Best Words

Trump mangles the language, from Trevor Noah:

Ezra Klein Sums Up The Trump Presidency

A tweet from Ezra Klein:

Donald Trump does not want to be in charge of any of this. He wants to play president on TV. He doesn't want responsibility for governance in a time of crisis, and in every way he can, he's refusing to do that job, and lashing out at those who ask him to do it.

The Onion Nailed Trump A Month Ago

Click here for an article by Ed Scarce at Crooks & Liars entitled "The Onion's Prescient Column On Trump Promoting Ingesting Cleaning Products."

Here's the article from The Onion, dated March 25, 2020, subtitled "Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It’s Coronavirus Cure":

EVANSTON, WY—Throwing bottles of bleach, ammonia, and Drano into a cart at his local grocery store, area man Troy Mitchell was reportedly stocking up on one of every cleaning product he could find Wednesday in case President Donald Trump announces it is a coronavirus cure. “I got toilet bowl cleaner, carpet cleaner, Swiffer WetJet refills—you name it—just so me and my family will be ready if the president announces one of these things can treat Chinese virus,” said Mitchell, indiscriminately throwing containers of laundry detergent, Scrubbing Bubbles, grout whitener, steel wool, Febreze, Tilex mold and mildew remover, and laptop screen wipes into the cart, the contents of which rang up to $2,513.67 at checkout. “I’m not getting caught without some oven degreaser should Trump say it’s going to save us, so I better go ahead and grab me a bottle. After this, I’m hitting the hardware store to pick up a 5-gallon bucket of roof sealant to make sure I’m prepared in the event that turns out to be what gets rid of the Wuhan. Could just be 10 or 20 squirts of Windex into each nostril. You never know what might work in a pinch!” At press time, neighbors confirmed Mitchell had been found unresponsive on the floor of his bathroom with several empty aerosol cans of Rust-Oleum wax-and-tar-removing solvent by his head.

Trump (Republicans) v. Post Office

Click here for an article at The Plum Line in The Washington Post by Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent entitled "Trump’s new rage attack on the post office could hurt his voters most." Read the whole article to see what Trump and the Republicans are trying to do to the Post Office. Here are some excerpts:

President Trump is trying to kill the U.S. Postal Service — or at least make it submit to his will.

The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump said, launching into a sneering list of complaints, including his common and false contention that it loses money by delivering for Amazon.com.

It’s true that the agency has a financial problem. In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS — unlike any other government agency or private company — to prepay 75 years’ worth of employee retirement benefits, which costs billions every year. Without this, its operating losses would be a fraction.

Not only that, the Postal Service is the only government agency that we demand turn a profit.

But despite its losses, the Postal Service remains America’s most beloved federal agency, with overwhelming majorities viewing it favorably and believing it does a good or excellent job.

Whether you live in Manhattan or in a remote stretch of North Dakota, the Postal Service will deliver your mail — not for the $25 or $30 UPS or FedEx will charge for a letter, but for 55 cents.

This is crucial, because the Postal Service is structured precisely so that it can do things like treat people in rural areas (where mail is more expensive to deliver) equally to people who are closer to metropolitan areas and/or who benefit from more options such as UPS or FedEx.

"Grassroot" Protests? Not So Much

Click here for an article in The Washington Post, by By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm, entitled "The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping."

Surprise, surprise. Behind these "spontaneous" demonstrations are a network of right-wing organizations undermining restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus, many headed by people who were prominent in the equally well-organized and well-funded Tea Party movement.

A network of right-leaning individuals and groups, aided by nimble online outfits, has helped incubate the fervor erupting in state capitals across the country. The activism is often organic and the frustration deeply felt, but it is also being amplified, and in some cases coordinated, by longtime conservative activists, whose robust operations were initially set up with help from Republican megadonors.

One such organization, "Convention of States," was "launched in 2015 with a high-dollar donation from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican patron. It boasts past support from two members of the Trump administration — Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development."

Brulle [a sociological researcher] said the blowback against the coronavirus precautions carries echoes of efforts to deny climate change, both of which rely on hostility toward government action.

“These are extreme right-wing efforts to delegitimize government,” he said. “It’s an anti-government crusade.”

On Behalf Of All Us Potted Plants!

Patricia Nilsen posted this on Facebook by Amy Wojkowski, a court reporter from Huntington Beach, California:



Here are the lyrics:

I want to lug my equipment up five narrow flights of stairs
Into a room with no outlet in sight
And sit down in the planet’s most uncomfortable armchair
Then skip the breaks and work into the night

And I won’t care as long as it means that I have pages to turn in
No, I won’t care, I want to be a potted plant again

I’m ready for a fight with six attorneys
Even if it’s only O and One
Let’s do nine hours of expert testimony
A fast-talking Brazilian would be fun

I’m looking forward to a hostile witness
It’s more fun than the one that always cries
(I’ll keep) hoping the deponent doesn’t notice
When I struggle not to laugh at all their lies

Then if I’m packing up my gear to grab a bite to eat
Before I scope tomorrow’s expedite
I will not bat an eye when plaintiff’s counsel comes to me
And says they’ll need a rough draft by tonight

It’s crazy all the little things I never thought I’d miss
I’d even spend a day in a courtroom
But if this pandemic taught me anything it’s this
Depos just don’t work the same on Zoom

And I won’t care as long as it means that I have pages to turn in
No, I won’t care, I want to be a potted plant again
Talk over each other while you rattle off some numbers
If it means this court reporter will finally get some orders
I just can’t wait to begin, to be a potted plant again

Trump's Shameful Performance Is Costing American Lives

It remains to be seen, but it looks as though Trump's incompetence may end up making America's response the worst in the world.

The following is a complete comment made by pgerlings, in reply to an article in the Boston Globe by Michael A. Cohen (not Trump's lawyer, but a regular Globe columnist) entitled "The incredible shrinking president":

It cannot be overstated just how bad of a job the trump administration is doing at keeping Americans safe from this virus. Relative to the rest of the world, both the case rate and the fatality rates are growing at far higher levels, and consistently so.

Through this morning, here are the cumulative growth rates in total cases from March 23 through this morning according to the data at the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 website:

US: 1215%
Belgium: 771%
Japan: 720%
France: 630%
Netherlands: 449%
Spain: 378%
Germany: 329%
Iran: 220%
Italy: 149%
South Korea: 18%
China: 3%

World: 440%

The growth rate in new cases in the US is so much higher than the rest of the world, to the point where more than 30% of new cases is identified worldwide have occurred in the United States, even through the US makes up only 4% of the world's population. Worse, our growth rate is almost 3 times higher than the world total, even though we make up an ever increasing portion of that total.apan: 720%

When we look at the growth rate in fatalities, it's even worse. Again, these data are current through this morning and represent the growth rates seen since March 23.

US: 5152%
Belgium: 4370%
Germany: 2672%
France: 1745%
Netherlands: 1149%
Spain: 612%
Japan: 342%
Italy: 234%
Iran: 156%
South Korea: 93%
China: 2%

World: 731%

These numbers are mind boggling. While there are other countries having similar challenges (Belgium, for example), the US again leads the world and is growing at a much faster rate! Back on March 24, the US made up about 12% of the world's fatalities; yesterday it was at 42%.

The most striking comparison is against South Korea.

On January 20th, both the US and Korea reported their first local cases of the virus. Today, the US total case load is a staggering 700,000 versus "just" 10,600 in South Korea, a nearly 70-1 ratio.

Both countries have had the same amount of time to prepare for this. Both countries relied on the same data from the WHO. And yet the US has suffered 70 times more disease than South Korea, and it's still early days! Worse yet, the growth differential keeps getting worse. Every single day since March 23 has seen the US case load growing faster than the world as a whole. We still lag most of these countries as it relates to testing as a percent of the total population, as well as those who show symptoms (a great many Americans are dying and not being counted in the totals).

It is simply astonishing how many Americans will tragically, needlessly perish because of Trump's stunning mismanagement of this. Sure there is blame to go around, but none more than the White House, whose track record is the bottom of the barrel compared to just about every other country out there.

It is because of this that trump is trying so hard to distract Americans. He knows he is failing Americans, and that many of his own constituents are at risk. So he is trying to change the subject.

Don't let him.

Wisconsin Election Abomination

Wisconsin held a Democratic primary election (Biden v. Sanders, with Biden a heavy favorite and the result not really in doubt) on April 7, 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Ten other states that were scheduled to hold primaries in early April had pushed the dates until later in the year, when the worst of the pandemic was expected to have passed, but the Republican House and Senate in Wisconsin refused to change the date -- in the face of heavy Democratic opposition.

The Democratic governor of the state took executive action at the last minute -- Saturday, April 4, in a special session -- to order the election postponed. The Republicans controlling the House and Senate immediately appealed to the Republican Supreme Court of Wisconsin to overturn the action, and were successful; it was ordered on Monday, April 6, that the election proceed the next day.

To top it off, also on Monday, April 6, the day before the election, the Supreme Court of the U.S. (that is, the Kavanaugh Court) ruled to overturn a Wisconsin move that mail-in absentee ballots be accepted beyond the 8 p.m. Tuesday closing of the polls, although by that time the election staff, overwhelmed by unprecedented requests for 1.2 million mail-in ballots, had not even finished sending them out.

All this was naked partisanship on the part of Wisconsin Republicans to force the election to be held during the height of the pandemic and therefore to suppress large numbers of votes. The reason they were so desperate to suppress the vote as much as possible was that on the same ballot as the Democratic primary, another choice on the ticket was between a Democratic challenger and an extreme conservative Republican incumbent for a seat on the State Supreme Court (thereby hoping to maintain the conservative Republican 5-2 majority). Republicans feared that under normal circumstances, hundreds of thousands of voters would turn out to vote for their Democratic presidential candidate -- and while they were there would pull the lever for the Democratic Supreme Court candidate.

The election went ahead, and it was a disgrace -- particularly in Milwaukee, the largest city in the state, where the electorate is only 35% white, but 40% black and 20% Hispanic or Latino. In the previous state election, Milwaukee, with a population of about 600,000, had 180 polling places; this time there were 5. Madison, Wisconsin, with a population of about 260,000, had 92 polling sites during the last election; this time, it had 66.

66 polling sites for a city of 260,000 and 5 for a city of 600,000? What's going on here? Republican election officials claimed that they could not find enough poll workers willing to risk their health to man the polling sites, but that was a lie; there were a great number of emails and tweets from people expressing their outrage at the decision and a willingness to serve as poll workers.

The election in Wisconsin on April 7 was a travesty, a shameful episode in the history of the state. The Republican majority in the House and Senate deserve to be overwhelmingly defeated in the next election.

Kushner Shenanigans, Colorado

Jared Kusher rarely speaks, but he did so at the daily Trump Show on April 2. First, he said, "Very early this morning, I got a call from the president. He told me he was hearing from friends of his in New York that the New York public hospital system was running low on critical supply." As a result, he said, New York was receiving 4,000 respirators from the national stockpile.

Ooookaaay, so that's how the national stockpile of respirators is distributed? When the president hears from his friends that respirators are needed? Trump is surrounded by medical experts who can tell him where equipment needs to be allocated, but it takes calls from his friends to get him to act?

But Kushner continued, and he mystified people by saying: ""You also have a situation where in some states, FEMA allocated ventilators to the states and you have instances where in cities they’re running out, but the state still has a stockpile and the notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use."

WTF? Kushner left the press conference without facing questions about his statement, so he left reporters and pundits scratching their heads: The federal stockpile is supposed to be "their" stockpile? Who the hell is "they"? It's not for the states to use? How can that possibly make any sense?

The generally accepted purpose of a national stockpile of devices such as respirators is that such a stockpile is maintained by the federal government for the purpose of distributing to states as they are needed -- but not under the Trump administration, which refuses to take responsibility for the distribution of respirators, probably in an attempt to dodge negative press resulting from poor management of the process, shoving the blame, if blame there is to be, to the individual governors.

The way it is now, Trump's administration stays out of the process, and governors of states that need respirators are expected to go out into the public marketplace and bid against other states, hospitals, or other entities in the market for respirators. That's what Jared Polis, Democratic governor of Colorado, did. He was able to find a company willing to provide Colorado with 500 respirators that would be available soon. A contract was signed. So all will be well -- right?

Well, maybe not. At that point, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) jumped into action. I'm used to thinking of FEMA as a good guy, but now that it's under Kushner's direction, not so much. FEMA proceeded to exercise force majeure and override Governor Polis's signed contract on the grounds that this was a federal emergency and FEMA took precedence. Which is true; FEMA was acting within its authority, and Polis had no recourse. He could only fume in anger as FEMA stole his respirators.

It soon became clearer what Kushner meant when he was talking about "our stockpile." On April 8, Trump tweeted, "Will be immediately sending 100 Ventilators to Colorado at the request of Senator Gardner!" [exclamation point emphasis Trump's, not mine.}

So to considerable fanfare, Trump grandly dispensed 100 (not 500) respirators to hard-hit Colorado, loudly crediting a Republican senator, Cory Gardner. Respirators taken from the 500 Polis ordered and FEMA hijacked.

Thanks so much to our wonderful President Trump and far-seeing Republican Senator Gardner!

Click here for an article from the editorial board of The Denver Post entitled "Trump is playing a disgusting political game with our lives." According to the article:

President Donald Trump is treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It’s the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives. For the good of this nation during what should be a time of unity, he must stop.

Trump Dilemma: Goose Economy Or Maintain Shutdown?

If he gooses the economy by getting people back to work, Covid-19 will surely come roaring back and he'll be accused of killing people to improve things economically and increase his election chances; if he maintains the lockdown (the course recommended by the medical experts), unemployment could exceed 30% and he'll face the election with the economy devastated. What to do, what to do? Poor Donald. As president, he is believed to be protected from indictment for criminal conduct; if he loses the election, what are the chances of an indictment? Excellent, says Michael J. Stern, a federal prosecutor for 24 years.

Click here for an article by Stern in The Hill, entitled "Trump's self-interest is at odds with safe coronavirus policy."

While the immediate danger of Trump’s wish for “packed” public events has passed, it is a mistake to think he finally respects the health risk posed by this virus and is committed to doing all he can to mitigate it. It should not be long before Trump redirects his effort to resume the course he previously charted: people back to work and a growing economy, despite the human toll.

With any other president, we could default to the belief that he has the country’s best interests at heart. But if a Trump presidency has taught us anything, it is that Donald Trump’s first allegiance is — and always will be — to himself. Instead of using this existential crisis to bring people together, Trump has tried to take down anyone who criticizes his botched response to the pandemic, while simultaneously heaping undeserved praise on himself.

Trump absolved his failure to supply hospitals with adequate medical supplies by repeatedly implying that exhausted healthcare workers were stealing surgical masks (and apparently selling them on the black market).

And always looking to leverage a quid pro quo — in deed if not in word — Trump suggested that governors should withhold any criticism and instead be publicly “appreciative” in order to get life-saving federal medical supplies for their hospitalized citizens.

Tsunami

Trump Administration Report On Hospital Readiness: Chaos

Click here for an article at Crooks & Liars by Susie Madrak entitled "Inspector General Report: Our Health Care System in a State of Chaos." Bear in mind, this is a report by Ann Maxwell, Health and Human Services Assistant Inspector General in Trump's administration (nowadays known as "Dead Man Walking," her government career almost certainly at an end). Maxwell is being interviewed by reporter Ken Dilanian for a segment on Stephanie Ruhle's program on MSNBC.

Stephanie Ruhle introduced a segment with Ken Dilanian on a new internal assessment of how the Trump administration has done in helping the country's health care workers.

"Explain what is this all about. Day in and day out, we hear from the administration saying the hospitals have all that they need. At the same time, hospital workers and state governors are saying that's not the case," she said.

"Stephanie, this is a report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. So a watchdog but within the Trump administration," Delanian said.

"And what they did was, they interviewed 324 hospital administrators in 46 states. And what they found was a health care system in a state of chaos. Totally refuting the comments by President Trump on Saturday that he said hospital administrators were thrilled with the level of supplies. This report creates a picture of dire shortages, confirming what NBC News and other outlets have reported about shortages of ventilators and masks.

"Also going further and saying in some cases, shortages of cleaning supplies and even thermometers. One case they talked about a hospital, 700 staff and two thermometers. The hospital officials are worried about the health and safety of their own workers. They're concerned about their finances. We interviewed Ann Maxwell, the assistant inspector general. She seemed genuinely stunned with some of what her team found. Let's take a listen." ANN MAXWELL: I think one moment that stands out for me is when I was talking to a hospital administrator, and he told me he had staff in the hospital out trying to procure masks and gloves from auto part shops, from home supply stores, from beauty salons, art supply stores. And I was just taken aback by how in that one example you could see both the desperation, the challenges they're facing, and ingenuity they were putting forward in trying to solve these problems to provide good patient care and save lives.

"In some cases, Stephanie, what this report found is -- federal and state stockpiles were defective. They got a shipment of masks for children and 1,000 had dry rot. So big problems with the federal response and hospital administrators are begging the federal government to do more," Delanian said.

Click above to watch a short (2:07) video clip of that portion of the interview.

UPDATE: At today's "press briefing" (a.k.a. Trump's daily dose of self-congratulation), a reporter tried to question Trump about the report, but he blew it off. His response, according to an article at CNN: "'Give me the name of the inspector general. Could politics be entered into that?' Trump said, indulging another troubling trait, the singling out of public officials that he deems insufficiently loyal to him personally." Here's another reference, at CNN.com, to that question by the reporter:

Trump also dismissed the reporter, Fox News correspondent Kristin Fisher. "Testing is still a big issue in this country," she said as he sighed. "When can hospitals expect to receive a quick turnaround of these test results?" Trump, agitated, said hospitals and states "are supposed to be doing the testing," sidestepping her question and shifting blame away from the federal government. After making some false claims, Trump told Fisher, "You should say 'congratulations, great job,' instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question."

And although the segment above was an interview of Maxwell, the CNN article goes on to say "The report was written by the principal deputy inspector general for the department, Christi Grimm. According to her official biography, Grimm, who has worked for multiple administrations, is an award-winning public servant with "two decades of leadership and expertise in health and human services programs." So Grimm's career may well be on the line as well. Watch this space.

Max Boot: "The worst president. Ever."

Click here for an article in The Washington Post By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, entitled "The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged," subtitled "From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost."

Click here for another article in WaPo by Max Boot, entitled "The worst president. Ever," in which Boot says, "The Post article [above] is the most thorough dissection of Trump’s failure to prepare for the gathering storm."

It didn't have to happen this way, says the WsPo article: "Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus"; "Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck."

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.

Republicans, many believing the story that the whole thing was a "Democrat hoax" to bring down the president after impeachment had failed, were influenced by "scornful coverage on Fox News and other conservative networks. As a result, Republicans were in distressingly large numbers refusing to change travel plans, follow “social distancing” guidelines, stock up on supplies or otherwise take the coronavirus threat seriously."

The article concluded:

In reality, many of the failures to stem the coronavirus outbreak in the United States were either a result of, or exacerbated by, his leadership.

For weeks, he had barely uttered a word about the crisis that didn’t downplay its severity or propagate demonstrably false information. He dismissed the warnings of intelligence officials and top public health officials in his administration.

I've only scratched the surface. The article, "which retraces the failures over the first 70 days of the coronavirus crisis, is based on 47 interviews with administration officials, public health experts, intelligence officers and others involved in fighting the pandemic. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and decisions." The whole article is well worth reading.