Don’t you just know that Donald Trump doesn’t give a rip about the health and well-being of those who continue to fawn over his idiotic rants?
He is conducting indoor campaign rallies. The fans he attracts are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them without masks. They’re cheering his pronouncements, booing his references to the “fake news” media.
He is denigrating Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s care and caution against exposing his own fans to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump is not to be derailed. He will continue to stage those rallies. They will be indoors. They’ll be full of the Trumpkin Corps faithful.
They also well might cause a serious spike in infection and, God forbid, death among those who ignore social distancing and masks.
Does any of this matter to Donald Trump? Hell no!
Is any of this a reason to perhaps rethink whether you want to support this guy’s bid for re-election to a second term as president? He says he cares about you.
Michael Caputo, an embattled communications chief for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has issued an apology and says he is considering taking medical leave.
Good idea, dude. Make it a permanent leave.
Caputo apologized for bringing negative publicity onto HHS for remarks he made accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of conspiring to concoct bad news to undermine Donald J. Trump.
Of course, Caputo had no evidence to back it up. He just blurted it out. I also should point out that Caputo has zero public health experience and was put in his job as HHS flack as a political payoff from the Trump campaign.
The CDC is working overtime trying to find a way out of the pandemic crisis. To my way of thinking, the pros at the CDC have little time to conspire. They have their hands quite full trying to prevent more deaths and illness from the COVID-19 virus.
What we are witnessing is continued chaos among those in the Trump administration who supposedly are charged with delivering cogent messages on the nation’s ongoing fight against the coronavirus.
Instead we get nutty conspiracy theories by a top-level administration who doesn’t belong in the job he occupies.
Take your leave, Michael Caputo. Do not come back.
I have lamented how social media can corrupt our thinking while dictating the course of public debate.
Then again, it provides a laugh … even at issues that aren’t haw-haw funny. Such as this Twitter item that found its way onto my Facebook feed today.
Donald Trump got angry with the World Health Organization because it supposedly gave the COVID/coronavirus pandemic the short shrift. He wants to pull the United States out of the WHO.
But wait! Now we hear from none other than the iconic journalist Bob Woodward that Donald Trump did the very same thing. Wow, man! Who knew?
We have Trump’s voice recorded forever telling Woodward that the president didn’t want to “panic” Americans. So he lied to us. He told us the pandemic was like the flu. He said the nation’s doctors had it all “under control” and that the coronavirus would disappear … like a miracle!
That’s what Trump said. Woodward’s got it on audio recording.
So, does this mean Trump will set aside his anger with WHO, return the nation he governs to the health agency and rejoin the international fight to find a vaccine for the killer virus?
No. It doesn’t mean that at all. Because Donald Trump doesn’t acknowledge when he’s wrong. He doesn’t admit to being a fallible human being.
The Donald’s only instinct is to lie. Then he expects us to believe the lies he blurts out.
Donald J. Trump’s existence in a parallel universe simply is something to behold.
Here’s the latest. Trump said the United States has “turned the corner” on the coronavirus pandemic and is hurtling toward something resembling a normal life prior to the pandemic’s arrival.
Not so fast, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert and a key member of the White House coronavirus pandemic response team. We haven’t turned anything like a corner, Fauci said. He explained that the infection and death rates continue on their upward trajectory.
“I have to disagree with that,” Fauci said of Trump’s assessment.
This is precisely what many of us have been saying about Trump’s inability to speak the truth about matters that demand only the truth. Accordingly, Trump the politician cannot be trusted to tell us the truth when he is in the midst of a political campaign in which he is fighting desperately to keep his job.
It is no great scoop to realize that Trump thinks first of his political fortunes. The rest of us? Hah! Trump will continue to soft-pedal the consequences of the pandemic for as long as he continues to run for re-election.
Here, though, is the real rub: Trump’s base of supporters will believe the self-serving politician before they trust the learned opinion of a man who has spent his entire adult life waging war against infection diseases. They will forgo masks in large gatherings of fellow Trumpkins. They won’t heed the advice of Dr. Fauci and other medical experts who warn them of what can happen to them if they fail to follow proper preventative measures.
Trump will continue to lie about “turning the corner.” Medical experts such as Dr. Fauci will seek to correct him. Trump won’t care what the experts say. The experts will continue issue warnings.
Parallel universes remain impenetrable. In this instance they also are profoundly dangerous.
A Donald Trump campaign staffer laid it on the line.
“Hard to say fake news when there is audio of his comments,” the staffer said.
What we have here are Donald Trump’s own words saying things that have caused yet another eruption on the 2020 presidential election campaign trail.
Donald Trump spoke at length with legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who’s about to release a book, “Rage.” What did Trump say that has caused such an upheaval? Oh, only that he knew in February that the COVID-19 pandemic was a deadly event, but that he deliberately withheld any warning signs of doom because he didn’t want to cause “panic” among Americans.
So, let’s see how we connect a few dots.
Donald Trump vowed to protect Americans when he became president of the United States. Then in the earliest weeks of 2020, a virus was detected overseas. Donald Trump’s initial public reaction was to declare that the coronavirus would disappear, that it would vanish like a “miracle.” No sweat, he said. Nothing to see here, he reminded us.
Except now we hear that he knew early on that we had a relentless killer knocking on our door. And that Donald Trump refused to do a damn thing to protect Americans.
Good ever-lovin’ grief! Is this a “promise kept” or is it a sacred oath violated?
The word now is that the Trump campaign and the White House are “scrambling” to craft — or concoct — a cogent message to respond to Trump’s own words.
There, indeed, can be no “fake news” retort from Team Trump, or from Trump himself. Although, and this point should be made, not a damn thing ever has prevented Trump from invoking that phony excuse even when the evidence has been laid directly at his feet.
These Twitter messages illustrate rather nicely, in my oh-so-humble view, where Donald Trump’s re-election campaign breaks down.
The top tweet comes from someone quoting Vice President Mike Pence. You can see Pence’s message. Hold that thought.
The message from Ronald Klain offers a damning testimony to the reality of the moment. Klain, I should add, served on Vice President Biden’s staff in the Obama administration … so he has an axe to grind.
Klain does bring to light what should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain in their noggin. The coronavirus pandemic has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. The death and illness counts are climbing dramatically. They’re still going up and up. Why?
Well, because the Trump administration refused to act decisively when the pandemic arrived. He has been running a scattershot operation. He contradicts the advice of his handpicked medical experts on measures needed to stem the sickness and death rate.
Oh, and then there’s the civil unrest, the turmoil, the deaths of black Americans at the hands — and knees — of some rogue cops.
Is this a safe America? Is this the kind of nation we need to preserve with the re-election of Donald Trump? Hardly.
And yet the Trumpkin Corps keeps harping about how the United States will head straight to hell if Americans elect Joe Biden as president. Are you kidding me?
I just completed an errand run that took me to a grocery store, an automobile parts department, a battery shop and a bank lobby.
What do these places have in common? Every customer and business employee were masked up.
This is the new normal, or at least part of the new normal that I am finding more acceptable by the day. Actually, wearing a mask before entering a business has become virtually second nature to me.
This is how we must cope with life in the Age of the Pandemic. Or, at least until they find a vaccine that makes us (more of less) immune from it.
I don’t wear my mask out of some patriotic fervor, as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has suggested as a reason to wear a mask. I don’t wear it to make a political statement of any sort, which is what fans of Donald Trump have suggested.
Oh, no. I wear the mask because I subscribe the theory promoted by medical experts that they help keep us clear of the killer virus.
I maintain social distance whenever possible; at times it isn’t, such as at the parts department today when several of us got crowded in a corner of the room. But we were all masked up!
Of all the new normal activities that still annoy me, I have to say this fist-bumping, and elbow-bumping when we greet people drives me a bit nuts. I am a handshake guy. I have a firm handshake and I enjoy grasping someone’s hand — be it a stranger or a friend — just to let them know I am glad to see them. I don’t have a bone-crushing grip … you know, like the one Superman used in “Superman II” where he pulverized Zod’s hand.
The mandates about masks, social distancing and all the other preventative measures are OK by me. Indeed, it seems a bit strange to look around and hardly even notice that everyone is wearing a mask.
Republican National Convention speakers have been criticizing their Democratic convention colleagues for what they have called an egregious error of omission.
Democrats, they say, should have talked about the violence that has erupted in many of our cities as Americans have protested police conduct in the wake of the deaths of African-Americans.
That’s a fair point. The DNC should have spoken to that issue at their virtual convention a week ago.
However, let’s not let the RNC escape similar critiques of its message. The GOP that has nominated Donald Trump and Mike Pence for a second term has yet to address the terrible heartache, misery and death associated with the COVID crisis. Yes, they have acknowledged the existence of the crisis. They have said nothing about how it has affected the loved ones of those who have died or the economic collapse that has occurred as a result of the pandemic.
Therein, I submit, exists the error of omission on the Republicans’ part in this political game of Can You Top This?
Republicans continue to portray Donald Trump’s initial pandemic response as courageous, forceful, bold, proactive … all that happy horse dookey. It was none of that. They know it as well as you and I know it. Do not expect them to come clean by the time the convention wraps up.
I just want Democratic nominees Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to remind voters of the start choice awaiting them. Do they want more of the same chaotic incompetence or a return to compassion, empathy and actual presidential leadership?
The signs all around us tell a grim tale of failure, not success, in the ongoing battle against the COVID-19 virus that continues to sweep across the world’s wealthiest, most advanced nation.
The U.S. death toll has surpassed 170,000; the infection toll is more than 5 million. More telling is that that infection rate is accelerating, meaning that more people are getting sick every day than they were, say, a month ago.
And yet, Donald Trump keeps telling us we’re succeeding. Really, Mr. President? How in the name of medical science can this fellow possibly claim a success rate when we’re getting sicker by the day and when the fatalities keep mounting.
Remember, too, this little factoid: The United States comprises roughly 4 percent of the world’s population, but we account for roughly 25 percent of the world’s infection from the coronavirus.
Four percent vs. 25 percent. Hmm. That comparison simply blows my mind.
Against all of that, we’re going to hear from Donald Trump’s re-election team that we’re doing great. The nation’s economy is adding jobs at a stupendous rate. They will look straight past the monumental job loss that occurred when the pandemic tightened its grip on our business community, costing us roughly 30 million jobs over a three-month span.
That job loss, I should add, eliminated all the jobs created during the decade-long economic expansion that began on the watch of President Barack H. Obama, who took office in January 2009 amid the then-worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The current economic collapse makes the 2008-09 Great Recession look timid and tepid by comparison.
I mention all of this because I will await word on how Donald Trump intends to defend his response to the global pandemic. To my way of thinking — and perhaps the thinking of most Americans — his initial non-response has produced the infection and death rates that are now savaging our nation.
So, yes, Donald Trump must take responsibility for the misery he caused by failing to respond quickly and decisively enough when the pandemic first presented itself.
How does Donald Trump defend his pitiful record against what we know has transpired?
There won’t be cheering crowds. No balloon drops. No demonstrations of delegates wearing goofy hats and festooned with buttons of all sizes, colors and slogans.
No. The Democratic National Convention is going to be a “virtual” event with speakers talking to the nation from their own living rooms, or their dens, or their basements.
What has to happen at this event, in my humble view, is not unique to this uniquely delivered political event. What we need is to hear a vision for the future from presidential nominee Joe Biden, from vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris and from the assortment of speakers who will talk to us over the course of the next four days.
You see, that element has existed in political conventions going back through the history of our great and beloved republic.
I do not expect to hear a futuristic vision from Donald Trump, the Republican whose party convention occurs next week. Trump is trading on division and disunity, on distrust of others and on fear. I look for him to keep beating that drum all the way to the election.
What’s left for Democrats? They have to lay out a plan for how they intend to fix what Trump has damaged. Trump has wrecked our international alliances; he was impeached over his attempts to bribe a foreign leader for dirt on Joe Biden; he has sought to dismantle environmental protections; Trump has threatened to deport U.S. residents who came here as children because their parents sneaked into the country without proper documentation.
The Democrats’ strategy is as traditional as any part of this nominating process that hasn’t been altered by the coronavirus pandemic. They need to speak plainly and honestly to Americans who will tune in.
I will be one of them. I am awaiting a message of hope and revival and I damn sure don’t need a cheering crowd to persuade me to prefer their message over the fear-mongering that will come from Donald Trump.
