May 17, 2020: Trump Says We're Doing Really Well in Defeating COVID - Also in Defeating Inspector Generals

 

5/17/20: President Trump is in a celebratory mood, tweeting about his success taming the coronavirus! “Doing REALLY well, medically,” he claimed incongruously, “on solving the CoronaVirus situation (Plague!). It will happen!” 

Time to check the numbers to see if we were “doing REALLY well, medically.” According to John Hopkins University, by Sunday evening, the United States of America had: 

1,486,423 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (roughly 1.2 million more cases than the next most infected nation –  Russia). 

We also led the world in deaths: 89,550, placing us first in a race where you want to finish last.

With the grim numbers piling up daily, Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top economic advisors, spent Sunday morning trying to pass the buck from Trump to anyone else. If he thought Trump fans would fall for it, and they might have – he’d have blamed Cinderella. “Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space – really let the country down with the testing,” Navarro complained. 

If that wasn’t enough – having the ballsy nerve to blame a government agency led by a Trump appointee, an agency of the government Donald J. Trump heads – HHS Secretary Alex Azar had another explanation for high U.S. death rates. Americans weren’t dying because he and Trump fumbled the ball. Americans were dying more than, say Canadians, or Germans, because they were fat. Azar cited “comorbidities,” or underlying conditions, as the reason for America’s high death toll. Just to be clear he ticked them off: Obesity. Hypertension. Diabetes. 

Really…what could Health and Human Services do about that? If you died from COVID-19, it was actually your fault.

 

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“It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power.” 

Senator Mitt Romney

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WITH THOUSANDS dying every day and millions unemployed, we might forget that Disinfectant Donald is still threatening the rule of law in myriad ways. Lately, he has made a hobby of firing Inspector Generals. If you’re not clear, the job of any IG is to make sure that people working at the federal agency he or she oversees don’t break the laws. 

The latest victim of a Trumpian desire to rule like a king – the fourth IG he has fired in two months – was the IG for the State Department, Steve Linick. According to multiple reports, Linick had opened at least one investigation into possible illegal actions by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. So, Pompeo recommended his firing. Trump agreed. 

(I can find only one example of President Obama relieving an IG in eight years as president. I also find one case where President George W. Bush was asked to fire an IG. Robert W. Cobb resigned instead.)

 

As usual, most Republicans are too cowardly to complain about the president’s assault on the rule of law. One U.S. Senator did show a dash of courage. A second protested, but we’ll have to wait to see if there are any results. A third expressed concern. 

Starting with the last of the three: Sen. Susan Collins, who finds herself is in a fight to retain her seat in November, went on record via Twitter: 

I have long been a strong advocate for the Inspectors General. They are vital partners in Congress’s effort to identify inefficient or ineffective government programs and to root out fraud and other wrongdoing.

 

…The President has not provided the kind of justification for the removal of IG Linick required by this law.

 

See! Concern! The president might be breaking the law…. 

Chuck Grassley, GOP chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was blunt. But the question remains. Will he act? 

He made it clear to reporters that inspectors-general were “crucial in correcting government failures and promoting the accountability that the American people deserve.”  Congress, he pointed out, “requires written reasons justifying an IG’s removal [emphasis added]. A general lack of confidence,” which Trump had cited as his reason for dumping Linick,  would not “satisfy Congress.” 

Sen. Mitt Romney, who seems to be the only GOP senator still in possession of a pair of nuts, was more direct. He warned that Trump’s firings of multiple inspectors-general were “unprecedented” and “doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose….It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power.”