12/6/20: At this point, perhaps the best outcome we can expect as Donald Trump’s days in office dwindle, would be for him to suffer a complete emotional breakdown. The way he’s going, it wouldn’t surprise most Americans to see him strip off his suit and run down Pennsylvania Avenue, with only his elongated red tie flapping in the breeze, screaming that aliens had stolen his votes, inhabited Joe Biden’s body, and plan to harvest human organs for dinner.
(Wait, isn’t that the QAnon story?)
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“And I think our job is to constantly say those are myths, they are wrong, and you can see the evidence base.”
Dr. Deborah Birx
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What do we know today, for certain? We know Rudy Giuliani has COVID-19. We know that for real.
Since he’s been wandering the highways and byways of America, lo, these many weeks, searching for lost Trump votes in rivers (false claim) and under rocks (also false), mask-less at every stop, he has been not only the nutty face of Team Trump’s legal campaign, but also a one-man super-spreader event.
With news of his infection, Team Trump was quick to announce that Rudy had tested negative twice before traveling to Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia in search of elusive machines with fairy-tale like powers to alter votes. The Arizona legislature decided not to take a chance, after holding a hearing with “Typhoid Rudy,” his sidekick lawyer Jenna Ellis, and a few zany witnesses. They closed for a week.
As for Rudy,
he’s 76 years old, which puts him at risk, and he went, almost immediately, to
the hospital. Hospitalizations for COVID-19 reached an all-time high in the U.S. on Sunday, with Rudy
and 101,486 other Americans taking up beds.
 |
Dr. Deborah Birx. |
Sunday morning, Dr. Deborah Birx, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force – now apparently moribund, with the president showing zero interest in combating the spreading disease – expressed frustration. She grumbled that healthcare experts and frontline workers were still fighting “myths.” Dr. Birx has been on the road for weeks, talking to medical people across the country, and trying to provide help.
Now she appears to have reached a breaking point. “I hear community members parroting back those situations, parroting back that masks don’t work, parroting back that we should work toward herd immunity, parroting back that gatherings don’t result in super-spreading events,” she said in a Sunday morning interview. “And I think our job is to constantly say those are myths, they are wrong, and you can see the evidence base.”
The super-spreader of those myths?
Trump.
In any case, Dr. Birx warned, “Every state across this country needs to increase their mitigation and every state needs to be critically informing their state population that the gatherings we saw in Thanksgiving will lead to a surge, it will happen this week and next week.”
“This is the worst event that this country will face not just from a public health side, yet we know what behaviors spread the virus and we know how to change those behaviors to stop spreading the virus.”
We do know. Wear a mask. Social distance. Wash our hands. No large gatherings.
By contrast, later this month, both the White House and State Department have large holiday parties scheduled.
Even Trump’s vaccine czar, Moncef Slaoui, on Sunday offered support for President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to ask Americans to wear
masks for 100 days after his inauguration. He called it a “good idea.”
*
SUNDAY, another top Georgia state official, another Republican, Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan made it clear he, too, had reached a breaking point. He had had about all of the president’s lies he could stand.
“The Constitution is still in place. This is still America.”
Commenting on Trump’s Saturday evening rally in Valdosta, Duncan told Jake Tapper of CNN that Trump’s “mountains of misinformation” were hurting the Republican Party in his state. “I worry that this continuous…you know…fanning of the flames around misinformation puts us in a negative position with regards to the January 5 runoff,” he explained.
Two seats in the U.S. Senate will be won or lost that day and may determine which political party controls the Senate for the next two years.
Duncan also made clear, he was “disgusted” by
the president’s behavior since the election, an election in which he campaigned
for Mr. Trump. Trump’s sustained allegations regarding a “stolen” election, and
his attacks on Georgia officials for not helping him turn the state’s vote
around, had led to death threats aimed at many of those officials and their
family members.
Duncan continued:
All of us in
this position have got increased security around us and our families and it’s
not American, it’s not what democracy is all about but it’s reality right
now. So we are going to continue to do our jobs. Gov. Kemp, Brad Raffensperger
and myself all three voted and campaigned for the President but, unfortunately,
he didn’t win the state of Georgia but it doesn’t change our job descriptions.
“If I had a chance to spend five minutes with every single person in Georgia that doubted the election results, I think I’d be able to win their hearts over, show them the facts and figures, separate fact from fiction,” he said during an interview on CNN. He did not, of course, have time.
Duncan was clear. Trump lost the vote in Georgia. Biden would be the next President of the United States.
“The Constitution is still in place. This is still America,”
he added. “As the lieutenant governor and a Georgian, I’m proud that we’re able
to look up after three recounts and watch and be able to see that this election
was fair.”
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office – and also a target of death threats – along with several lower-level poll workers and their families – spoke out Sunday. He categorized Trump’s statements at the rally the night before as “false.”
“They’re misinformation, they’re
stoking anger and fear among his supporters,” Sterling – yes, another Republican
– said in an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press.
“And hell, I voted for him. The situation is getting much worse.”
*
IN OTHER President Pouty Face news, Axios reports (and even Fox News takes note) that sources inside the White House say Pouty Face is “considering a made-for-TV grand finale” if the vote in the Electoral Colleges goes Biden’s way.
That finale, on January 20, his final day in office, would feature “a White House departure on Marine One and final Air Force One flight to Florida for a political rally opposite Joe Biden’s inauguration.”
While Mr. Biden explains in a low-key inaugural address, minus most of the usual trappings in the face of the coronavirus, how he hopes to lead a great nation, Trump would hop a jet and skip town. No concession speech. No welcome to the White House for his successor. No attempt to observe the traditions of a democracy, in particular the peaceful transfer of power, based on the will of the people. Rather, Trump is planning to flee to Florida, and there announce that his hat is in the ring. He will be running again for president in 2024, Grover Cleveland style.
From pussy-grabbing, all the way through four years in office,
to this, Trump has never shown, or had, an ounce of class.
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