Following up on the post below about the COVID sabotage, I will offer this take on it from Brian Beutler:
As we see with the CRT episode, whether people care or not is socially determined. The Brazilian Senate accused Bolsonaro of mass murder for similar malfeasance. If leaders act like it’s a betrayal, people will see it that way.
More likely, though, they will call it a shame and move on because frontline members like Abby Spanberger want things to go back to normal.
It’s not just issuing a report calling Trump mean names. Draft legislation giving CDC officials a legal duty to warn the public in the event of a looming pandemic, so that never again can a president hide the truth from the people. Make it a priority, make Republicans vote on it.
Then keep going. Refer Trump and others to DOJ. Create a compensation fund for Americans who lost loved ones in the early days—people who went about their normal business because they didn’t know they were at risk because the president lied to them.
Intersperse it all with public hearings featuring Messonier and others who were prevented from saving lives because the stock market was more important.
Or, continue operating as a sub rosa select subcommittee, release the next batch of damning emails to the press, get two days worth of good headlines about it, then move on all over again.
Originally tweeted by Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) on November 14, 2021.
This will not happen, of course. The congress seems unable to handle more than one or two things at the same time. They have put all their eggs in the January 6th Committee basket.
But this shows how it could be done if they wanted to. They could even create some (gasp) drama by having real live victims testifying before congress about how the administration misled them about the virus.
That would, of course, be aggressive and that’s something they want to avoid at all costs. After all, the media would say they are politicizing the virus and you wouldn’t want that.