"what digby sez..."
Month: April 2020
“As soon as it became clear that there was community spread… then it became clear that we were in real trouble… That was probably towards the middle to end of January.”
Oops.
January 22 — TRUMP: “We have it totally under control…It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
January 30 — TRUMP: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment.”
January 30 — TRUMP: “We are in great shape.”
January 30 — TRUMP: The coronavirus will have “a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.”
The Trump death cult responds in Harrisburg Pennsylvania:
Now, we don’t know the circumstances of how Mr. McDaniel contracted the virus, nor do we know if he took unnecessary and foolish risks. But we do know what he thought of the measures put in place to keep him and the rest of the public as safe as possible. And we all know people who have similar opinions to those that McDaniel expressed on social media. If there’s any good to come from his death, let it be that people take those measures more seriously. They’re there for a reason.
I don’t want anyone to die of this thing. Not even people like this who are brainwashed by right-wing dogma and Donald Trump and can’ t see the forest for the trees. But while these people may have a “right” to risk their lives over this, they really don’t have a right to spread it to others simply to make a political point.
I guess they are all martyrs to their cause. But it’s a very stupid cause …
Morgan is a fellow celebrity blowhard who has been fully supportive of all of Trump’s insanity—
Morgan was particularly critical of the president’s performance at near-daily White House briefings, which he said he has watched “with mounting horror.”
“He’s turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him — almost like what’s more important is winning the election in November,” Morgan said.
Then he addressed the president directly:
“You will win the election in November if you get this right. If you stop making it about yourself and make it about the American people and show that you care about them over yourself, you will win. And, conversely, you will lose the election in November if you continue to make it about yourself, you continue playing silly politics, continue targeting Democrat governors because that suits you for your electoral purposes.”
Uhm, Piers? This cretinous behavior is what you’ve been applauding for the past three years. He’s always been like this and he can’t change.
Morgan has been a stalwart pal through thick and thin. His unusual clarity in this situation must sting. But when he’s right, he’s right…
President Trump’s daily coronavirus briefing rallies aren’t even attempting to be relevant to the ongoing pandemic anymore. To the extent it even comes up, it’s entirely Trump bragging about anything that’s gone right and blaming others for everything that’s gone wrong. If you want to know the latest information about the emergency, you’ll need to look elsewhere. These are Trump campaign rallies done for the strict purpose of energizing his base.
If you’re reading this, you have probably read and heard vast amounts of reporting revealing the overwhelming failure of the Trump administration in this crisis. Just this weekend we learned that CDC officials were actually embedded with the World Health Organization in January and repeatedly alerted the U.S. government about the coronavirus outbreak, which completely undermines Trump’s attack on the organization.
Unfortunately, the foot-dragging and the errors continue. The testing that everyone but Trump acknowledges must be in place before the economy can come back to life is still not available. Hospitals and first responders are still in dire need of medical equipment and protective gear. If the Trump administration pushes people back out of their homes prematurely, there’s an excellent chance we’ll have another outbreak well before we’ve recovered from the first one.
It’s now obvious that will happen, at least in some places. In Jacksonville, Florida, officials opened the beaches and people flooded back out, with no masks and in close quarters. All over the country there have been small but vocal protests during the last few days, demanding that governors open their states immediately.
As Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye has reported, these “protests” are actually organized by astroturf groups modeled on the Tea Party protests more than a decade ago:
FreedomWorks, the instrumental force behind the Tea Party, “is holding weekly virtual town halls with members of Congress, igniting an activist base of thousands of supporters across the nation to back up the effort” led by right-wing commentator Stephen Moore. the Associated Press reported. Other right-wing groups vocally opposing shutdowns include Americans for Prosperity, an organization funded by the Koch brothers, and the conservative Heritage Foundation. There is even a connection to the family of Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. As Michigan’s governor noted, the DeVos family foundation helped fund Facebook ads for this week’s protest.
Pro-gun activists have gotten in on the act as well. It’s an astroturf Tea Party reunion tour. If there’s one thing that riles up the right wing, it’s apparently the government trying to save lives.
Trump has personally praised the protesters, as has Vice President Pence, even as they both pretend to care about their new guidelines for opening up the country.
All of this seems odd, considering that common sense and all legitimate scientific advice says that prematurely letting our guard down will likely lead to a resurgence of the epidemic, which means shutting down the economy all over again, with even worse consequences. But there’s a method to their madness. As chaotic and dysfunctional as they are at governing, Trump and the Republicans are united on their electoral strategy. They’ve decided that opening up the economy as soon as possible is their ticket to re-election.
According to Politico, conservatives are still convinced that a highly divisive strategy focused entirely on their base voters divisive, is the way to go, even in the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis:
Trump-supported activists are protesting strict stay-at-home orders. Conservative groups’ internal polling in red-leaning and swing states show a significant uptick in Americans who favor reopening the country. A growing chorus of Republican lawmakers across the nation are on board.
“If you don’t see something start to happen … you’re going to see a conservative revolt by our base,” said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative group which recently polled on reopening the economy. “The worst strategy for him is to keep things shut until August. Trump is basically going to win or lose his election right now, in the next month.”
Yes, that would be the same FreedomWorks that is ginning up the protests, along with the other big money groups financed by the likes of Charles Koch. Big-money donors seem to have activated their astroturf groups to get people out in the streets to make sure that Trump feels the pressure from his beloved base to open up the economy. These donors care about preserving their power, privilege and profit margins, but Trump only cares about the November election. They are manipulating him, and his supporters, to make him believe that his ends are aligned with theirs.
Republicans in Congress are doing their part as well. The bill coming up for a vote this week to refill the small-business bailout fund is missing something vital that Democrats and governors of both parties have been begging for: help for state and local governments, many of which are in dire economic trouble and hamstrung by balanced-budget requirements.
You might think that providing them with federal funds to keep the lights on would be a no-brainer. But according to Axios, Republicans will use this prospect as a cudgel to force states to reopen: “The thinking among some Trump administration officials is that many states should be reopening their governments soon and that additional funding could deter them from doing so.”
If anyone thinks that depriving aid won’t hurt Trump’s political enemies more than his allies, they still don’t understand how he plays this game. (There’s already evidence that more federal aid has gone to red states.) This may end up being the most destructive thing Trump has done, at least in economic terms.
Reality is finding its way into the public consciousness, however. Maybe it’s the growing pile of dead bodies — more than 40,000 of them as of Sunday night — or Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior at these coronavirus briefings, but recent polling shows that Trump’s rally-round-the-flag bump in support has already dissipated. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating down to 43%, from 49% last month, while his disapproval rating is up nine points, to 54%. The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reports that 60% of respondents say that Trump did not take “the threat seriously at the beginning,” with a similar number in the Pew poll saying that Trump was “too slow” to recognize the threat. His overall approval average is headed back down to the low 40s, where it’s been throughout his entire term.
So it’s almost certainly true that the “base strategy” is the Trump campaign’s best bet. They will try to run the table again in the swing states and pull off another narrow Electoral College victory. Maybe he’ll be the luckiest politician in history and can make that work in the middle of an epic public health emergency that he has botched beyond all measure.
Meanwhile, the country is fracturing in ways I would never have believed possible.
With doctors and nurses and first responders literally dying trying to save people every day, and all of us just trying to get through this nightmare, Republicans have cynically unleashed the same vicious ugliness we saw during the “Obamacare” debates a decade ago. Dividing the country at a time like this is one of the worst things the Republican Party has ever done. How do these people sleep at night?
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Anthony J. Rivera
Fallout continues over Capt. Brett Crozier being relieved of command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Crozier had sent a four-page letter up the chain of command warning about the cornavirus outbreak aboard his vessel. Crozier called on the Navy to take action to prevent members of his crew from dying. After the email was leaked to the press, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly relieved the commander over the objections of uniformed military leaders, claiming Crozier had sent the letter “over nonsecure, unclassified email” and copied it to ” 20 or 30 other people.”
After flying to Guam to publicly castigate the ship’s former commander before his former crew, Modly resigned. It seems he exaggerated the distribution of the letter and misrepresented his reasons for firing Crozier. “Breaking news: [President] Trump wants him fired,” Modly reported told a colleague the day before relieving Crozier.
Retired Chief of Staff at Special Operations Command Central, Andrew Milburn, writes in a Military Times commentary that Modly’s “intemperate and at times insulting” speech points to a “darker problem” in Donald Trump’s maladministration of his relationship with the US military. Milburn was blunt:
When norms are continuously violated without anyone making a stand to defend them, they simply cease to be norms — the exceptions accrete into a new rule. That should be of concern, not just to the US military which has always prided itself on being apolitical, but to the country as a whole, whose democratic values depend in part on a healthy relationship between the military and its civilian leadership.
One norm is that the men and women should not be used as political props. Instead, Trump “never misses an opportunity to shape what should be morale boosting visits to the troops into campaign rallies.” What’s more, Trump at a Pentagon meeting called senior military officers “a bunch of dopes and babies… losers” who “don’t know how to win anymore.”
Milburn offers a harsh assessment of Trump’s tenure:
For those in uniform, tradition is likely the most hallowed cornerstone of service. Pride in the history and symbolism of one’s unit or ship helps build the cohesion essential to withstand the rigors of combat — which is why senior officers, visiting a unit for the first time, will often begin their address by reflecting on that unit’s past glories and accomplishments. By contrast, the first visit by the president to sailors of the 7th Fleet began with a White House request to cover the name of the guided-missile destroyer John S McCain to avoid offending the Commander-in-Chief. The request, brazenly political and ethically questionable as it was, was a blow to esprit de corps, and an insult to the ship’s crew. Incidentally, what is perhaps even more disturbing about this request is that someone in uniform obeyed it, reflecting perhaps a trend of inappropriate compliance to these overt attempts to turn troop visits into political events. A few months later, Air Force officials echoed that trend by defending the wearing by Air Force personnel of hats displaying Trump’s campaign slogan during a visit by the president to a base in Germany. Air Force officials relied on the legalistic claim the displays technically did not violate Pentagon regulations, while wholly missing the point that they undermined the underlying principle.
Another term essential to healthy civilian-military relations is the understanding that civilian leadership should involve, well, leadership. The relationship between uniformed service members and their civilian masters should have at its foundation a sense of mutual respect. There are probably those who would argue that the military has no right to expect such treatment, that civilian control of the military means control, and no more. The issue is not one of protecting the sensitivities of four-star flag officers (although they too should expect fair and respectful treatment), but on the importance of maintaining a visible respect for the military institution, represented at the civil-military level by senior uniformed leaders. By insulting their leadership, civilian members of the administration indirectly assail the profession that all uniformed personnel have chosen to serve. That kind of behavior is simply not ethical, nor for that matter pragmatic, for any administration that relies, as all US governments do, on an all-volunteer force to protect the nation’s interests. The spectacle of civilian leaders mistreating uniformed officers at the pinnacle of their profession can hardly be expected to encourage an 18-year-old to volunteer to wear the same uniform.
The wrong man was relieved of command. Trump’s granting pardons or clemency to troops accused of (or convicted of) war crimes; his interference in the trail of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher (also accused of war crimes) and his expulsion from the elite service; and Trump’s “acts of personal vindictiveness and retribution” against officers for honorable actions that reflect badly on him all contribute to the erosion of the traditions and norms that make America’s military a disciplined, professional organization. At some point, Milburn writes, military officials have a duty to speak out publicly about “the destructive effect that this administration is having on a relationship that is a fundamental aspect of our democratic society.”
One cannot place all the blame on Trump. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the torture and rendition programs of the George W. Bush administration thoroughly greased the slope down which Milburn sees the military sliding. But Bush is home in Texas. Trump is in the Oval Office adding to, not undoing, the damage done before him.
[h/t SR]
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Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
Falling on his gold-plated dagger, Mnuchin gets the prize for Trump bootlicker of the week:
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday said it was his idea — not President Donald Trump’s — to add the President’s name to coronavirus stimulus checks that are being sent to millions of Americans, saying it’s “a terrific symbol” to Americans.”We did put the President’s name on the check. That was my idea. He is the President and I think it’s a terrific symbol to the American public,” Mnuchin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.
“When asked about his name appearing on the checks during a briefing last week, Trump said, “Well, I don’t know much about it, but I understand my name is there. I don’t know where they’re going, how they’re going.””I’m sure people will be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful check and my name is on it,” the President said, adding that “it’s not delaying anything.”
lol…
I know these people are making me crazy, I admit it. I should ignore them But I am having a hard time getting past the fact that they don’t care if they kill innocent people with their nihilistic, braindead devotion to Donald Trump.
Sanity:
And I have to remind myself that these people are in the minority. Unfortunately, they are the only citizens the president of the United States and the Republican Party believe matter:
Nearly 60 percent of American voters say they are more concerned that a relaxation of stay-at-home restrictions would lead to more COVID-19 deaths than they are that those restrictions will hurt the U.S. economy, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
But while strong majorities of Democrats and independents are more worried about the coronavirus than the economy, Republicans are divided on the question, with almost half of them more concerned about how the restrictions could affect the economy.
The poll also finds a significant change in attitudes about the coronavirus. The percentage of voters saying they’re worried a family member might catch it has increased by 20 points since last month’s survey.
And those saying the coronavirus has changed their family’s day-to-day life in a major way has jumped by more than 50 points from the March NBC News/WSJ poll.
So much else has stayed steady in the midst of the pandemic — Trump’s job rating remains unchanged in the mid-40s, a majority continues to disapprove of the president’s handling of the coronavirus, and Trump is still trailing apparent Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the race for the White House.
“We have not seen a change at all [for Trump],” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his colleagues at Hart Research Associates.
Trump will follow the astroturf protesters, just as certain foolish GOP Governors are doing.
Trump aides and allies say they are growing confident that an earlier restart amid the coronavirus pandemic could help the president in his reelection campaign, according to six people close to the White House or Trump campaign.
They point to emerging signs around the country. Trump-supported activists are protesting strict stay-at-home orders. Conservative groups’ internal polling in red-leaning and swing states show a significant uptick in Americans who favor reopening the country. A growing chorus of Republican lawmakers across the nation are on board.
“If you don’t see something start to happen … you’re going to see a conservative revolt by our base,” said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative group which recently polled on reopening the economy. “The worst strategy for him is to keep things shut until August. Trump is basically going to win or lose his election right now, in the next month.”
A swift economic restart, however, could backfire politically for Trump if it causes a flare up. Public health experts caution that the country currently lacks the robust testing capacity needed to relax social-distancing guidelines, and cases in many states have yet to peak.
But Trump allies are seizing on positive signs in numerous coronavirus hot spots, including a decrease in death rates in New York and indications that early social distancing flattened the spike of cases in California. And they’re telling the president to kickstart the economy — now.
“The facts on the ground increasingly suggest a marked turn toward lower health risks, even in New York,” according to a Republican who talks to Trump. “I strongly urged the president personally to expedite the badly needed reopening of our country.”
Hanging over the health data, however, is the politics of the situation. And many of Trump’s political allies and outside advisers believe they have the public increasingly on their side.
Conservative groups have noticed a change in polling in recent weeks when they ask respondents if they want to go back to work, even if they know the outbreak could continue to cause infections or deaths, and if they would be willing to wear protective gear, such as masks and gloves, in order to reopen the country. Some polls saw upticks as large as 20 percentage points of people willing to return to work, even with the caveats, according to said Brandon and others familiar with the polls. The FreedomWorks polling was conducted in suburban House districts in battleground states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The issue also has become partisan. Those identifying as conservative largely side with Trump’s economic advisers worried about the ongoing harm to the country’s finances and favor a quicker economic restart, while those identifying as liberal largely side with public health officials and urge longer timelines.
“Trump, himself, feels pretty good about the polling in his direction,” said a Republican familiar with the White House’s deliberations. “It’s a winner for Trump if it becomes a partisan issue.”
This is so grotesque I hardly know what to say. Even if they are having these conversations in private, the idea that they are openly telling the press that they are making life and death decisions based on political considerations is stunning.
I guess they’ve persuaded themselves that if a bunch of their own voters die they won’t get blamed. And who cares if the political opposition goes down or the health care system collapses, amirite? Their “base” won’t really mind. They’ll be thrilled that Dear Leader brought us through the plague and they will reward him with another term.
But it might not work out that way…
It’s a high-wire act for the president. If the economy begins to recover with minimal additional infections, the president will take credit. But if infections spread or a second shut down is needed, he could be blamed. As a result, at least one person who speaks to Trump has urged him to not consider politics when it comes to lifting economic restrictions.
One person.
He could be pushing with everything he has to get a trustworthy, national testing process in place and ensure that hospitals all over the country are well stocked with protective equipment so that we can move into the next phase with some competence. But that would require being able to actually get results. They don’t do that. They only know how to blame, deflect, bully and take credit for things they have not done.
In fact, any competent president would be riding high in public opinion right now if he had even the slightest stock of goodwill built up during their term and showed a modicum of leadership right now. Instead, this petulant, angry, incompetent performance has left him mired where he always is and all they can think of to do is keep their brainwashed death cultists happy.
The assault on the WHO is just another Trump tantrum:
More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.
A number of CDC staffers are regularly detailed to work at WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.
The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s charge that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States.AD
[…]
In addition to working at WHO, on assignments first reported Saturday by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, CDC officials are often members of its many advisory groups. The emergency committee advising the organization on whether to declare “a public health emergency of international concern” during deliberations in mid to late January included Martin Centron, director for CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.
When China eventually agreed to let a joint WHO mission into the country in mid-February, it included two U.S. scientists among 25 national and international experts from eight countries, although the Americans were not permitted to visit the “core area” in Wuhan.
From the beginning of the outbreak, CDC officials were tracking the disease and consulting with WHO counterparts. A team led by Ray Arthur, director of the Global Disease Detection Operations Center at CDC, compiles a daily summary about infectious disease events and outbreaks, categorized by level of urgency, that is sent to agency officials.
Arthur, according to a CDC official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, has participated in the CDC daily “incident management” calls, discussing information he learned from WHO officials.
Information is passed up the chain of command from CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services in daily reports and telephone discussions, this official said.
Any information of a sensitive nature about the growing outbreak was and continues to be shared by CDC officials with other U.S. officials in a secure facility located behind the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center at its Atlanta headquarters.
In the early days of the virus response, those officials included HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Information about what the WHO was planning to do or announce was often shared days in advance, the CDC official said.
Trump defunding the WHO in the middle of the pandemic is perfectly predictable. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and the iran Nuclear Deal as well because he simply doesn’t know how to do anything but say his predecessors and foreigners have done everything wrong so he can show he’s doing something by reversing it.
He really is the blowhard at the end of the bar complaining that all the powers-that-be don’t have a clue who has suddenly found himself with the power himself. He’s just a whiner, not a leader so this is the only thing he can think of to do — destroy everything that went before, blame others for his failures , dance as fast as he can and just try to get through each day.
American carnage is his legacy.
*By the way, I’m sure the WHO deserves to be scrutinized and critiqued like any other institution. But defunding it in the middle of the pandemic is sheer lunacy.