2/25/20: I think we know whose head will
roll next for telling the truth in Trumpistan (see: Vindman
and Sondland, 2/7/20 and Joseph Maguire, 2/21/20, for example).
Dr. Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for
Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention should start packing up her office tomorrow morning.
Today, Dr. Messonier informed reporters that CDC expects the
COVID-19 coronavirus to spread in the United States. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore,”
she explains, “but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and
how many people in this country will have severe illness.”
So far, the disease is contained.
With new clusters appearing round the globe, chances the
virus will spread increase. If strict quarantine measures become necessary, as
in Italy and South Korea, “The disruption of daily life could be severe.”
*
AN OBJECTIVE OBSERVER would not blame President Trump for the
spreading virus. But we do remember how ludicrous and twisted his attacks were when his predecessor was dealing with an
outbreak of the far-deadlier Ebola virus in 2014.
Who, for example, can forget this “assessment” offered up by
Citizen Trump in October 2014, after Obama refused to block all flights from
Africa, where the disease had erupted, to this country:
____________________
“I
am starting to think that there is something seriously wrong with President
Obama’s mental health. Why won’t he stop the flights. Psycho!”
Citizen Trump
____________________
When all was said and done, eleven Americans contracted Ebola,
seven of them while working in Africa. All were strictly quarantined. Two persons
died. But that was all it took to unbalance Donald J. Trump. He insisted that Obama
should have to hug and kiss all the Ebola patients.
So, let’s poke a little fun at “President Blubber” here. (We
are adopting a juvenile nickname for Mr. Trump, which is another tried and true
Trump trick.) Pucker up, you giant bag of lard and cellulite!
You’re kissing your first COVID-19 patient tomorrow!
We jest, of course. And we should note again: No objective
observer would fault Mr. Trump for the spread of disease around the globe and
the threats of economic dislocation that have followed. Still, we know how much
he loves to claim every ounce of credit when the stock markets go up.
So, let’s be like President Blubber. Let’s credit him for everything
that happens to the Dow Jones.
It plunged a thousand points on Monday.
It plunged another 900 today.
It’s not his fault. Let this blogger be clear. But if Obama were
in charge, you know Trump would be howling.
*
WHILE A DEADLY VIRUS was threatening lives around the world, President
Trump kept busy today, threatening to forever unbalance the federal judicial
system.
Trump
aims to remake the courts in his own image.
Traveling in India today, where another authoritarian rules,
Trump lashes out at the U.S. Supreme Court. He has previously attacked the U.S. military justice system, “out of control,”
lower federal courts, a biased “Mexican” judge, who just so happened to be from Indiana, FISA courts, “Obama judges,” “slow and weak courts,”sentences he considers too lenient, people he thinks should be in jail even though they haven’t been
charged with any crimes – and even more people he’d like to see behind bars, trial or no
trail – plus people he thinks should be found guilty of treason. He has criticized the use of search warrants to gather evidence against one of his
felonious pals, the “cruel” mistreatment of a second felonious friend, and the unfair sentence meted out to a third felonious aide – and much,
much more.
In fact, Trump aims to remake the courts in his own image. And,
in that, there’s grave danger.
Today, he tweets: “While
‘elections have consequences’, I only ask for fairness, especially when it
comes to decisions made by the United States Supreme Court!”
How can he “insure” fairness. In
any case where his interests are involved, only seven judges shall vote.
According to the president, two
liberal members of the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Ruth
Ginsburg “should recuse themselves on all Trump, or Trump related,
matters!”
The system of Trump Justice we
can expect to see put in order in a second term for Donald J. Trump becomes
clear.
POSTSCRIPT: Think this president can’t
blow the rule of law to bits? Consider evidence from 2/5/20 (Trump assembles a
team of corrupt individuals to “fight corruption” in Ukraine); 2/7/20 (the
president ousts two men who testified under oath in the impeachment inquiry); 2/9/20
(Trump’s former Secretary of the Navy warns that the president is a threat to
democracy); 2/11/20 (Trump suggests that one of the men who testified under
oath should probably face military discipline); 2/12/20 (Trump and his Attorney
General interfere in the case of Roger Stone, who has been convicted of seven
felonies); 2/13/20 (former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly says
Trump gave his aide an “illegal order” and the aide did exactly right in
refusing to follow it); 2/14/20 (the president says he has a legal right to
interfere in any criminal case, because he’s president); 2/16/20 and 2/18/20 (thousands
of former officials from the Department of Justice warn against assaults on the
rule of law by this president); 2/19/20 (Trump practices pardoning scuzzy
criminals) and 2/20/20 (former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is accused of
offering a pardon from Trump for Julian Assange, if Assange will “play ball.”)
4/12/20: A quiet Easter passes. Even churches
are closed until the coronavirus abates. The Pope delivers a sermon to
Catholics round the world on the “contagion of hope,” but speaks from a nearly
empty St. Peter’s Basilica. Like many good Christian leaders, Pastor Greg Ball
of Destiny Church Naples in Naples, Florida holds
a drive-in Easter service. “What we’re doing is practicing
social distancing,” he tells a reporter, “asking everyone to stay in their cars
and to separate with a good distance between them.”
Members of the congregation listened to his sermon on the radio.
Some offered praise while standing in open sunroofs. “My heart was filled with
so much joy,” Ball said afterwards. “Everyone waving to each other in the cars
and smiling.”
So that was all good.
____________________
Patriots gather to hug
and shake hands and cough in each other’s faces.
____________________
One man who insisted on exercising his right to gather people
together in clusters and scoff at the possibility of infection, was Ammon Bundy, in Idaho. This is the same Mr. Bundy who led an
armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon to protest federal overreach.
He had pledged to hold a nondenominational Easter service in a venue holding up
to 1,000 people.
Because, let’s face it, nothing says “I am exercising my
freedoms,” quite like gathering people together, where they might pass the
virus along, and go back out into the world and spread it among family, friends,
and innocent bystanders.
ACROSS THE NATION, and around the world, the toll continued to rise.
According to Johns Hopkins University, as of Sunday afternoon the U.S. had 550,016 confirmed
cases of COVID-19. Spain stood next, with
166,127. But if we adjust for population, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and
the United Kingdom have all been harder hit, as have a number of smaller
countries.
Several states which were slow to issue stay-at-home orders were seeing
large increases. Those states included Florida (19,895 confirmed cases), Texas
(13,484) and (Georgia 12,452), now ninth, tenth and eleventh worst hit.
Washington, once the state with the most cases, has done a good
job of slowing the spread, and fell to thirteenth.
*
MEANWHILE, The New York Times published a scathing report on Saturday,
outlining President Trump’s fumbling efforts to deal with the coronavirus
threat when it first developed. By Sunday, the Narcissist-in-Chief had digested
the article, which meant he spent Sunday raging on Twitter.
If you don’t read the Times, you might not know that six
reporters worked on the piece (and updated it Monday). They talked to dozens of
sources and had access to numerous documents.
SUMMARY OF KEY
FINDINGS
In early January, the National Security Council office
responsible for tracking pandemics had already received intelligence reports “predicting
the spread of the virus to the United States.” Discussion focused on what might
have to be done to keep Americans home from work and shut down cities the size
of Chicago.
In early January, Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security
adviser, took a call from a longtime friend and Hong Kong epidemiologist. Pottinger
had worked in Hong Kong during the SARS epidemic in 2003.
As the Times explains,
Now, seventeen years later, his
friend had a blunt message: You need to be ready. The virus, he warned, which
originated in the city of Wuhan, was being transmitted by people who were
showing no symptoms – an insight that American
health officials had not yet accepted. Mr. Pottinger declined through a
spokesman to comment.
Around that same time, the State Department’s epidemiologist
warned in a report that the virus was likely to spread across the globe,
resulting in a pandemic.
Pottinger, reporters said, “began convening daily meetings
about the coronavirus. He alerted his boss, Robert C. O’Brien, the national
security adviser.”
Trump and his economic advisers continued to focus on keeping
the economy booming, and resisted pressing China for more information about the
spreading virus, rather than upend chances for a trade deal.
January 18: Secretary Azar briefed the president on the coronavirus
during a phone callto Mar-a-Lago. “Mr.
Trump,” according to the Times, “projected confidence that it would be a
passing problem.”
(The Times has also tracked Trump’s visits to golf
courses, his private resorts, and especially Mar-a-Lago. As of March 9, 2020,
he had visited Mar-a-Lago 31 times, and spent a total of 135 days there. Add 90
days spent at his private golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., 85 at Trump International Golf Club, West Palm
Beach, Fla., and 76 at Trump National Golf Club, Sterling, Va. The man
vacations a lot.)
By this time, Trump has spent 386 days as president at private clubs he owns.
Bedminster, N.J.
“I have
a great relationship with President Xi.”
Four days later, while attending the World Economic Forum in
Switzerland, Trump sat down for an interview with Joe Kernen of CNBC.
This exchange followed:
KERNEN: Before we get started – with – we’re going
talk about the economy and a lot of other things – the CDC
– has identified
a case of coronavirus – in Washington state. The
Wuhan strain of this. If you remember SARS, that affected GDP. Travel-related
effects. Do you – have you been briefed by
the CDC? And…
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I have, and…
KERNEN: …are there worries about
a pandemic at this point?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No. Not at all.
And – we’re – we have
it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it
under control. It’s – going to be just fine.
JOE KERNEN: Okay. And President
Xi – there’s
just some – talk in China that maybe the transparency isn’t
everything that it’s going to be. Do you trust that we’re going to know
everything we need to know from China?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I do. I do. I
have a great relationship with President Xi [emphasis added, unless
otherwise noted]. We just signed probably the biggest deal ever made. It
certainly has the potential to be the biggest deal ever made.
So: the president isn’t worried, and President
Xi of China is his pal.
January 28: A senior medical advisor at Veteran’s Affairs warns colleagues
in an email about the new coronavirus. “Any
way you cut it,” he says, “this is going to be bad. The projected size of
the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”
Health experts are reluctant to shut down air
travel to and from China, which will cut any contacts health officials from the
two countries might have.
“It
is still possible to interrupt virus spread.”
January 30: Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Redfield,
head of CDC, and others call Secretary Azar. They have changed their minds and believe
a travel ban should be put in place with China.
The World Health Organization declares
a global public health emergency. “The Committee
believes that it is still possible to interrupt virus spread,” they explain, “provided
that countries put in place strong measures to detect disease
early, isolate and treat cases, trace contacts, and promote social
distancing measures commensurate with the risk.
The Centers for Disease Control reports the first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission inside
the United States.
In a phone call to the president on January 30,
Secretary Azar warns that a pandemic is possible. Trump agrees to a travel ban,
but tells Azar to stop panicking.
January 31: The travel ban on China is issued.
Here, an aside from the blogger seems in order: Trump has insisted
he made all the right calls. He consistently cites imposition of the travel ban
as the critical decision.
Unfortunately, it would be another six weeks before he was ready
to admit publicly that the U.S. was confronting a colossal danger. It was as
if, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Franklin D.
Roosevelt had waited until February 18 to ask Congress to declare war.
In the next six weeks the war against the coronavirus was nearly
lost. On February 5, for example, Derek Kan, a senior official from the White
House Office of Management and Budget, told a group of senators that the Trump administration
had all the money needed to combat the spread of the disease.
“Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus,”
Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Democrat, wrote in a tweet shortly after. “Bottom
line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough.”
February 10: At a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire,
President Trump tells a crowd of adoring, but-science-challenged fans, he isn’t worried about the coronavirus.
And by the way, the virus, they’re
working hard, looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little
warmer it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true. But we’re doing
great in our country. China, I spoke with President Xi and they’re working very,
very hard. and I think it’s going to all work out fine.”
“We were flying the
plane with no instruments.”
February 14: Secretary Azar announces the federal government
will create a “surveillance” system in five U.S. cities to, in the words of the
Times, “measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project
the next hot spots.” The system ends up being delayed for several weeks.
That same day, Dr.
Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the Health and Human
Services Department, puts out a memo. He details what drastic measures to slow
the spread of the disease might look like. Titled “U.S. Government Response to
the 2019 Novel Coronavirus,” it lists steps that might become necessary:
…significantly limiting public
gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and
public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school
closures. Widespread “stay at home” directives from public and private
organizations with nearly 100% telework for some.
In days to follow the government botches early testing. The
first test kits sent out don’t even work.
In the words of one official, “We were flying the plane with no
instruments.”
By the third week in February, top public health experts had
decided to recommend a new approach to the growing threat. The American people,
they planned to tell the president, should be urged to observe social
distancing rules, and stay home from work.
When Dr. Kadlec, called for a meeting of the White House
coronavirus task force on February 21, “his agenda was urgent.” (The Times
had a copy of the agenda to use in writing the article). It was already clear,
Kadlec believed, that it was going to be necessary to lock down the country to
prevent the virus from spreading.
The only real question was: When?
“People
are carrying the virus everywhere.”
February 23: Dr. Kadlec learned that a 20-year-old Chinese
woman had infected five relatives even though she had never displayed symptoms.
That meant Americans who appeared healthy could be spreading the virus. “Is
this true?!” Dr. Kadlec wrote back to the researcher who had warned him. “If so
we have a huge whole [sic] on our screening and quarantine effort.”
Her response was blunt: “People are carrying the virus
everywhere.”
This isn’t “Fake News.” Reporters for the Times had
the emails.
Trump was traveling in India at the time. But on February 24,
Dr. Kadlec and a team of other experts made up their minds to present Mr. Trump
with a plan titled “Four Steps to Mitigation” when he returned.
The next day, however, Dr. Nancy Messonier, director of the
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, publicly issued the blunt warning
they had all agreed was necessary.
The stock market started to drop. When Trump returned from
his trip, he was furious. The health experts decided to cancel the meeting.
On February 26, Trump did select Vice President Pence to head
up the White House coronavirus task force.
February 27: President Trump wasn’t exactly laser-focused on
the threat from the virus. Instead, he decided to meet with African American
leaders at the White House. That is, African American leaders like “Diamond and
Silk,” who would gladly smooch his posterior.
(You’d
almost think Mr. Blogger was making it up. But we have the video!)
With Pence and his staff in charge, the Times says, “the
focus was clear: no more alarmist messages. Statements and media appearances by
health officials like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield would be coordinated through
Mr. Pence’s office.”
On March 6, Trump told reporters that the coronavirus crisis was “an
unforeseen problem.” So, you couldn’t blame him!
Five days later, the president told a group of bankers, “We’re having
to fix a problem that, four weeks ago, nobody ever thought would be a problem.”
March 10: Trump is still pushing the idea that a wall on the
border with Mexico will help stop the spread of the coronavirus. “Going up
fast,” he tweets. “We need the Wall more than ever!”
Your
house is still going to burn down.
March 11: The president
speaks to the American people in an Oval Office address. He announces a travel ban
to and from 26 countries in Europe. He does not call for school closures or
stay-at-home orders. Nor does he suggest social distancing.
Various health officials and even Trump’s former Homeland
Security Adviser Tom Bossert react to his speech in a series of emails.
They all know the virus is spreading internally – and
spreading fast. Shutting off travel from outside no longer matters. It’s as if your
house were burning down and you decided to post no trespassing signs on the corners
of your property. Your house is still going to burn down.
The Times has emails:
The president was still focused on keeping the economy going
strong. Rather than heed the health experts, he reached out to investors like
Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone Group.
What did Schwarzman think he should do?
It required a tense Oval Office meeting a few days later to overcome
the resistance of the president and his economic advisers. The health experts
called for stern measures to stop the spread. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin balked.
The economy would tank. According to the Times, “Mr. O’Brien, the
national security adviser, who had been worried about the virus for weeks,
sounded exasperated as he told Mr. Mnuchin that the economy would be destroyed
regardless if officials did nothing.”
According to the Times, three individuals played the
biggest role in swaying a stubborn president. They were Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the
former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Deborah L. Birx,
who the president likes because he thinks she’s “elegant,” and Vice President
Pence.
March 16: President Trump announces guidelines calling for
two weeks of social distancing.
The next day, during what has since become a daily press
conference, the president made a stunning announcement. “This is a pandemic,” he said,
which wasn’t stunning at all. That was obvious. “I felt it was a pandemic long
before it was called a pandemic,” he added. That was the stunning part.
