Russia Monitor — Trumps Owns The Pandemic: “He alone” Brought Us To This Crisis.

Trump lies. Trump’s COVID-19 lies put people at risk. Let’s start with this moment of nonsensical Trump bombast:

“I’ve felt it was a pandemic before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do was look at other countries…I have always viewed it as very serious.”

— Bill Kristol tweet quoting Trump.

By Dan Peak
The Commoner Call (3/19/20)

Dear Fellow Readers,

We open with a nonsensical quote; and will close with a second quote for a fuller picture of the psychosis of Donald J. Trump. A bit of context, a friend who is not a Trump supporter by any stretch, credited Trump for his leadership over the last few days. If Trump is communicating a more accurate picture of the challenge we all face, so be it – though by what lowered standard of expectation do we now operate?

Trump didn’t create the virus though his psychosis he deflects to the ‘other’, what he now inaccurately calls the ‘China virus’, graduating from Wuhan virus. Never mind he pissed away a window of weeks where we could have been better prepared. When Trump and Fox News were pooh-poohing the ‘common cold’ and downplaying the ‘15’ US cases, the virus was gaining on us. By the time you read this on Thursday the 19th we’ll be around 8,000 cases — and counting –for the US.

Trump downplayed the risk and did nothing.   it is criminal for him to now say he said “pandemic” before anyone else thought it.

Here are some simple explanations of Trump’s pandemic failure.

This is the biggest blunder in presidential history

Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin opens with, “…as he often does when he has made a mistake or revealed his ignorance, changed course to claim that he knew all along that we were facing a pandemic.

Rubin follows with a tweet from a woman named Sarah Longwell:

Trump didn’t cause the pandemic. What he did was squander America’s only advantage—a lag time during which to prepare for the crisis—thus encouraging the spread of the disease when it might have been contained. He has, in real and material ways, made this crisis worse.

Go to the tweet because you’ll see a video opening with Fox anchor Sean Hannity interviewing Trump on Jan. 31 in which Trump crows the situation is, “totally under control”. It makes the case clear, Trump fucked up for whatever reason … or pathology.

Rubin closes with, ““he alone” made the crisis infinitely worse by doing nothing for so long when leaders around the world were responding forcefully.

Trump’s message changed, why?

Surrounded by experts, Trump still needed an intervention by Tucker Carlson to take coronavirus seriously

Trump’s real cabinet advisors are Hannity and other Fox anchor, Tucker Carlson. Forget the stiffs like VP ‘Coronavirus Czar’ Pence and the rest of the dozen oddballs and nincompoops cast for his daily made-for-TV updates; Fox is the source for his real decisions, the strings behind the scene.

“And nothing illustrates this more vividly than one bizarre development among many others: That a Fox News host managed to get the president of the United States to take the coronavirus seriously when legions of public health experts around the world — and in his own administration — could not.”

But Trump is still not leading or being honest. Maybe we can flatten the curve but we still don’t have the health care infrastructure for even the short term.

Governors are angry at Trump over coronavirus. That’s ominous.

We still don’t have adequate testing for cases of COVID-19. The supply chain for even basic materials like masks and swabs needed for ongoing testing is fraught with problems and risk. Some of the ingredients for test kits are sourced from France and Italy.

We don’t have enough ventilators and respirators to care for the serious cases.

This article points to a New York Times report of a quote from Trump to the nation’s governors

“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.

New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grishman accurately pointed out, “If one state doesn’t get the resources and materials they need, the entire nation continues to be at risk.” Yet the one trusted Trump spokesperson, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, answered the question of whether “the delayed response may have been responsible for placing us on a path to a spike in coronavirus cases akin to that in Italy, which means it very well might have.

It’s sad to see Trump’s failure to lead when “the German government just placed an order for 10,000 mechanical ventilators” and Life Systems of Bothell, WA says “We could increase production five-fold in a 90- to 120-day period.

And Trump just tells the governors, go figure it out for yourself.

The US has tested roughly 5,000 cases while Italy has tested 135,000 and South Korea 275,000 (and counting for all three). We don’t know the scope of the problem as it is already so we are not prepared for the problem it will become. But again Trump’s psychosis is well explained by lawyer and NeverTrumper George Conway, If there were enough tests to go around, @realDonaldTrump would be claiming he designed them.

I don’t mean to scare anyone, but self-isolating is not a permanent solution, it is a short-term mitigating strategy. We’re going to be at this for a while. If you have the stomach, look at the March 16 report from the Imperial College of London: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand.

For the the Cliff Note version, go here.

*****

Trump is still leading ineffectively, but let’s be clear, his COVID-19 ineffectiveness goes back many months. Remember at a recent Trump presser when he professed to know nothing about budget cuts to the US pandemic team?

Video emerges showing Trump talking about cutting pandemic team in 2018, despite saying last week ‘I didn’t know about it’

““I’m a business person, I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them,” he added.”

But it goes back even further…

Before Trump’s inauguration, a warning: ‘The worst influenza pandemic since 1918′

And now we know, Obama was involved – because we know that anything related to Obama is a target for Trump and his psychosis of ‘man with little penis’.

Trump and his aides were warned and briefed:

“The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.”

*****

Meanwhile, Trump and Trumpsters are a constant Shit Show.

Rome burned while Senate Leader McConnell took a few days off to attend a Kentucky ceremony honoring SCOTUS judge Kavanaugh while also calling on any senior federal judges to retire now so he could replace them in advance of a presidential election Trump may lose.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, one of the first Congressmen to endorse Trump’s presidential run is now sentenced to 11 months in prison for his federal conviction for misusing campaign funds. He too used the phrase ‘witch hunt’ when news first became public.

Rep. Devin Nunes only a few days ago encouraged people to go out to bars and restaurants and even “go to your local pub” before trying to walk back his mind-numbing advice by suggesting he meant drive-thru. So – all, please do support your local drive-thru pub. Tell ’em Devin sent you!

Trump is saved from some embarrassing moment or worse because the SCOTUS will no longer hear oral arguments on pending cases, including the congressional suit to gain access to his financial records. And Trump’s Department of Justice is withdrawing from a suit against Russian companies indicted for their roles in Putin’s interference in the 2016 US election to benefit Trump.

*****

A final point; the second quote:

This was no doubt that Trump intended to take over and profit from the German vaccine industry.

Because the Trumps never actually add value.

Their “fortune” comes from cheating and taking advantage of situations. It’s all they know how to do.

— Author Teri Kanefield tweet (3/16/20) 


Let me remind you of Gov. Grisham’s (D-NM) comment above pointing out how there is no such thing as an isolated solution, we’re all in this together. Yet this is how Trump’s wrong-headed and dangerous form of populism works:

“The Donald Trump administration offered “large sums of money” to get exclusive access to a coronavirus vaccine being developed by a German company, Die Welt reported Sunday.

“According to the article, Trump was trying to get the Tübingen-based CureVac company — which also has sites in Frankfurt and Boston — to move its research wing to the United States and develop the vaccine “for the U.S. only.””

Yep – screw the world, save Americans. Which is only one step removed from ‘save the Americans he wants to save’, screw the rest.

If you’re not already grasping the significance, now we’ll start seeing the immediate economic impact in addition to the stock market meltdowns.

Trump is dangerous. For the sake of all, Trump needs to go.