“Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine,” read a bold CNN landing-page headline on Monday. (It has since vanished; a later headline reads, “Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine …“. Emphasis mine.) The very idea that a major news outlet would affirm a such a claim from pathological liar Donald Trump without qualification is, technically speaking, nuts.
The acting president told astonished reporters on Monday he has been taking the drug daily for a couple of weeks on the day after “60 Minutes” ran an interview with whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright, dismissed former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright had criticized the administration’s coronavirus response and opposed Trump’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine as an unproven treatment for COVID-19.
Activists and pundits have warned since the beginning of Trump’s reign that we as a people could not allow normalization of his up-is-downism. But since claims that his inauguration crowd was larger than Barack Obama’s, Trump has slow-marched the executive branch, the Republican Party (beyond the Never-Trump fringe), and a good portion of the country to Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Dana Milbank follows up on MSNBC reporting on a deceptively crafted chart (top) released by Georgia health authorities. At first glance, it appears to indicate a declining rate of infection. Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp reopened restaurants, theaters, nail salons, etc. in late April, and the chart seemed to support his decision:
But on closer inspection, the dates on the chart showed a curious ordering: April 30 was followed by May 4; May 5 was followed by May 2, which was followed by May 7 — which in turn was followed by April 26. The dates had been re-sorted to create the illusion of a decline. The five counties were likewise re-sorted on each day to enhance the illusion.
Only in Brian Kemp’s Georgia is the first Thursday in May followed immediately by the last Sunday in April. And only in President Trump’s America would we have the producers of such flimflam leading the reopening of our national economy.
Blogger Joey deVilla (“As a public service”) reordered the chart to put the dates in chronological order:
But deVilla noticed something else odd about the chart that Milbank also mentioned:
For every date, the county order is different (look at the colors of the bars). In fact, the order is always from highest to lowest number of cases, a design trick meant to fool the eye into seeing a consistent downward slope …
Georgia is not the only red state now playing fast and loose with its COVID-19 data. Florida Republican Gov. DeSantis may be wiping infection data that reflects poorly on his decision to reopen Florida the way los desaparecidos vanished in Argentina:
Late last Friday, the architect and manager of Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard — praised by White House officials for its accessibility — announced that she had been removed from her post, causing outcry from independent researchers now worried about government censorship.
The dashboard has been a one-stop shop for researchers, the media and the public to access and download tables of COVID-19 cases, testing and death data to analyze freely. It had been widely hailed as a shining example of transparency and accessibility.
But over the last few weeks it had “crashed” and gone offline; data has gone missing without explanation and access to the underlying data sheets has become increasingly difficult.
Rebekah Jones announced that for “reasons beyond my division’s control” her office no longer has control of the data. Nor is it involved in fixing mistakes or answering questions. She also cautions she does not know “what data they are now restricting.”
“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”
L’État, c’est moi.
Trump increasingly attaches unnamed crimes to critics and has called for investigations into and prosecutions of perceived enemies. He now claims unfavorable news coverage is illegal:
Steve Benen writes:
Note, the president could’ve simply accused news organizations of “smearing” him, or made an argument about reporting he considers unfair, but for Trump, that’s not good enough. He instead felt the need to argue that American news organizations are guilty of “illegal” coverage.
A day earlier, Trump wrote that the “radical left” controls a variety of tech companies, adding that his administration “is working to remedy this illegal situation.”
The president also, of course, recently condemned the investigation into the Russia scandal and his impeachment as “illegal.”
Reporters might want to decline future offers of rides in the acting president’s aircraft. An Aristophanes comedy this is not.
Update: It’s Ron DeSantis, not Rick Scott (anymore). I’m living in the past. [h/t SS]
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
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.