Mad King Donald takes the country on a death march
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Kevin Drum quotes a story in yesterday's Washington Post:
Trump administration pushing to block new money for testing, tracing and CDC in upcoming coronavirus relief bill
The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.
….One person involved in the talks said Senate Republicans were seeking to allocate $25 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing, but that certain administration officials want to zero out the testing and tracing money entirely….Trump and other White House officials have been pushing for states to own more of the responsibility for testing and have objected to creating national standards, at times seeking to minimize the federal government’s role.
Drum's comment:
This is...what? Insanity? When cases are rising, deaths are rising, and people are waiting up to a week to get testing results back, it flatly makes no sense. I can’t even think of anything to say about this. It’s beyond words.
He found some words:
POSTSCRIPT: Does this have something to do with Trump’s apparent belief that if we don’t test we’ll have fewer cases? Are White House aides not even willing or able to push back against craziness of this magnitude anymore?
Rob's comment:
Trump's first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, could take it for less than two months before resigning. He was quoted as saying afterward that Trump is "a fucking moron." Just so.
That Trump apparently believes that testing somehow causes COVID-19 is behind that madness and stupidity.
He---and the stooges around him---are at least carrying that idea to its logical conclusion: If we stop testing, the pandemic will be eliminated!
Instead, the polls show that this craziness is not going unnoticed by the American people.
Trump and Republicans are heading to a richly-deserved and historic defeat in November. That's the only silver lining detectable in this ongoing national disaster of an administration.
Republicans need to be crushed in November and banished to the margins of American political life where the racists, religious fanatics, gun nuts, and flat-earthers live.
But November is a long way off, and thousands of people will be sickened and die in the interim, not to mention the damage to American institutions and political culture.
The only historical parallel I can think of is Jim Jones and the People's Temple from days of yore, but he only killed 918 people.
And Jim Jones was a Democrat.
And Jim Jones was a Democrat.
Labels: Democratic Party, History, Pandemic, Right and Left, Science, The Repugnant Party, Trump
posted by Rob Anderson @ 3:00 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I was watching a Trump Coronovirus briefing when he was having them daily and I recall Fauci had just finished speaking and Trump approached the podium but Fauci had one more thing to say so Trump and Fauci were both at the podium and Fauci wanted to thank all of the Doctors and Nurses fighting this disease in the hospitals and to thank them for their sacrifice. Trump looked annoyed and just shrugged. There it was for all to see his psychotic indifference to over 100,000 dead Americans. I had started thinking how Trumps indifference to American deaths is passive genocide by indifference. You don't need to build gas chambers when you have a lethal disease killing off thousands of 'undesirables' for you for free.
He can't even bring himself to do the easy stuff, like an executive order on face masks. Even his foaming-at-the-mouth base would understand that he did it under political duress.
In the Wallace interview, he actually seemed to believe that the US has the lowest death rate from the virus. Hard to believe anyone lives in that kind of information bubble. If that's true, it's even scarier than if he's lying, which implies that he knows better than what he's saying.
That Fox/right-wing media bubble is itself a dangerous virus that's contaminating the government of the United States.
And his notion that it will help him to start doing the virus briefing is also crazy. It was hurting him politically, since he's not a credible spokesman for anything, let alone a pandemic, which someone---it used to be Fauci---who has some scientific understanding of epidemics.
It won't be Fauci this time, and Dr. Birx, as the NY Times showed the other day, had been feeding Trump happy talk and optimistic graphs---garbage in, garbage out!
In short, we and the country are fucked, but as you say the epidemic is hitting black people and Hispanics the hardest. Not surprising that a racist is not concerned.
Rob, this is all getting so depressing. I am really concerned for our nation, as a 66 year old i have seen some small bit of history and cannot remember when our country has been in such a bad spot. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the hope that somehow we will elect a new president in a few months. I do not trust the polls anymore, I saw what happened last election. I really am depressed at this point and wonder if other people are too. I know lots of people are angry but what about outright depressed.
Maybe 66 isn't old enough to have a political memory of 1968: race riots in big cities, the War on Vietnam at its height, the Democratic convention in Chicago when police attacked demonstrators on national TV, and the election of Richard Nixon in a close election.
Polls now are not like the polls in 2016. Keep tethered to reality by the FiveThirtyEight site that updates its polls daily. Trump is sinking in popularity everywhere, even in the swing states that let him win in the electoral college.
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