6/28/20: Sunday, we
have the president retweeting a video of fans in golf carts parading down a Florida
street. Anti-Trump protesters are out in force. Profanity flies in all directions.
One Trump loyalist pumps his fist and shouts, “White power! White power!”
____________________
Didn’t see it. Didn’t hear about it.
Didn’t read it.
____________________
It was impossible to
miss that howl, if you watched the brief video CNN provided. Yet the White
House was soon forced to claim the president didn’t see it.
If the clip were longer, I
wondered, could it be that the president missed the offending shout? I found a longer clip on Snopes,
the fact-checking site. It was still impossible. I kept looking and found the original
tweet. Yeah. That one liberal granny is a potty mouth.
You still can’t miss the “White power!” shout.
*
 |
Russia paying Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers. |
CLEARLY, the president needs to schedule a trip to the audiologist
soon. A report also surfaced today that the Russians offered Taliban fighters a bounty if they killed American and British troops in
Afghanistan. The New York Times is claiming that Mr. Trump had been
briefed on the matter weeks ago. Yet nothing had been done to challenge the
Russians.
Trump’s current Director of National Intelligence, John
Ratcliffe (who earned his job by smooching the president’s fat posterior during
the impeachment hearings) came to the president’s defense. He said neither
Trump nor Pence had been briefed on the matter.
Trump responded to this latest report by attacking The
New York Times for publishing the story. White House Press Secretary and
taxpayer-funded liar “Birther” McEnany backed his play. Trump wasn’t briefed! “This does not
speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence,” she admitted, “but to the
inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that
President Trump was briefed on this matter.”
In other words, the report existed. Ah, but the President
of the United States didn’t see it.
The Associated Press reported next that top
White House officials were alerted in early 2019 about the plot. Somehow, Trump
didn’t hear it. Next, the Times learned that the Brits had been notified of
the threat. Trump didn’t know it. It didn’t help Trump’s case when officials
said the bounty plot had been included in at least one of the president’s
daily briefings “sometime this spring.” Nor did it help when the
president’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, said, basically,
“Yeah, I told him about
this, a year ago.”
The president was forced to fall back to his last line of
defense. Maybe there was a warning in one of his briefings! Well, he didn’t
read his briefings! He was too busy. He liked people to tell him what was in those
written briefings.
Reading is hard.
No one told him about the Russians, except maybe Bolton, that
“washed up Creepster” and “lowlife,” as Trump now described him.
It didn’t matter anyway. The information in the briefing wasn’t
“actionable,” Trump now claimed. Even though he hadn’t heard about it or been
told about it, nor had an angel come to him in the night to reveal it, he was convinced
the information wasn’t accurate. McEnany told reporters U.S. intelligence
agencies didn’t agree on all the details of the plot. So, they decided not to
bother a busy man, like President Trump, with trivialities.
You know, American troops being killed for money.
Plus, Trump had other matters of import on his mind. Like
saving the statues of Confederate generals – who used to work hard to kill U.S. troops –
and did so with alarming regularity.
Also: he had to go golfing! (See: 6/29/20.)
*
Pence says all Americans
should wear masks.
IF THE PRESIDENT seemed as clueless as ever,
other members of Team Trump appeared to be waking to the fact that if we don’t
control the virus, we’re all in this together and facing economic and health disaster.
On Sunday, VP Pence finally said, during a
visit to Dallas, that all Americans should wear masks when out in public, if
social distancing isn’t possible. That message was blunted by the fact he
attended church earlier that day, where a hundred-strong choir sang lustily,
without a single face-covering to be seen.
Secretary Alex Azar, head of Health and Human
Services, also warned
that the “window was closing” on our chance to keep the coronavirus under
control. He did want to make it clear that none of this was Trump’s fault, even
if the president does refuse to wear a mask, likes to make idiotic statements
about the virus – like
drink bleach – and likes to hold
rallies where masks are about as rare as members of minorities.
The government has all kinds of weapons now
to fight the spread, Azar assured Jake Tapper on Meet the Press. The
problem was…Americans! It was our fault. Not Trump’s. Not Azar’s. If we “act
irresponsibly, if we don’t socially distance, if we don’t use face coverings in
settings where we can’t social distance, if we don’t practice appropriate
personal hygiene, we’re going to see spread of disease,” Secretary Azar explained.
(For example: Any Trump
rally.)
*
If only the Oaf in the Oval Office could figure this out.
SEN LAMAR ALEXANDER (R-Tenn.) calls on Trump specifically to don a mask. During an appearance on CNN, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, urged the president to wear a face mask “when it’s appropriate.” This, he explained, would help end the political debate over wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a new survey, 65% of Democrats now report wearing masks all the time when leaving home.
Slow on the uptake: Republicans are at 35%.
“His experts have told all of us that wearing a mask, social distance and washing your hands is the way we can contain the disease so we can go back to school and back to work,” Sen. Alexander continued.
If only the Oaf in the Oval Office could figure this out.
“It also would help to get rid of this political debate, that if you’re for President Trump you don’t wear a mask and if you’re against President Trump you do wear a mask,” the senator said finally. “The stakes are much too high for that.”
Then again, the president isn’t the only bonehead who doesn’t understand science. Rep. Lou Gohmert, 66, is in a high-risk category because of age, but on the floor of Congress he stubbornly refuses to wear a mask.
If he sneezes in your direction, your only recourse is to back away from the bonehead in a hurry.
Speaking of boneheaded, Gohmert explains that if he gets COVID-19, he will wear a mask, but until then he won’t.
This is like telling your girlfriend before sex, honey, if I
get you pregnant, I’ll wear a condom.
Republicans in Congress soon make it a point not to wear masks, citing the “irrational fears” drummed up by Democrats.
In just the last few days, with the GOP standing tall for the right to cough and sneeze as we please, the U.S. records the following death totals from COVID-19:
6/25: 667
6/26: 688
6/27: 563
6/28: 464
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