1/24/18: Donald J. is packing a bag,
getting ready for his trip to Davos, Switzerland, where he will deliver a big
speech at the economic summit. The First Lady is not packing her sexy undergarments – or anything else.
Stormy
Daniels, the porn star.
She isn’t going. She has a sudden “scheduling conflict.” That
conflict is known as Stormy Daniels, the porn star.
Speaking with reporters later in the day, Trump is asked if
he’s ready to talk to Robert Mueller. He assures them, “I‘m looking forward to it, actually. I
would do it under oath,” he adds. “I would like to do it as soon as possible.”
Hearing the news, Mitch McConnell faints dead away.
A chorus of right-wing voices howl. Rush Limbaugh warns that same night: “Don’t do it,” he tells the
president. “I don’t care what format. I don’t care what circumstance. Don’t do
it. There’s nothing to gain. Especially if they’re off the ‘collusion’
business, there’s nothing to gain by talking to Mueller.”
2/4/20: The “Ghost Trial” in the U.S. Senate continues. The Democrats present the evidence they have – and keep pointing out that they’d be happy to have more. The Trump administration, they point out, has blocked every subpoena filed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Republicans don’t deny the evidence the Democrats present. They insist the evidence isn’t good enough to impeach.
The Democrats in the House, they say, should have had more people to testify, even if the president told everyone, including the White House gardener, to ignore congressional subpoenas.
Catch-22.
*
TUESDAY EVENING, President Trump stands before Congress and delivers the State of the Union Address.
He brags for over an hour about his successes and touts his orange greatness. He also goes out of his way to slam the “failed efforts” of the previous administration every time he can. His obsession with President Obama, who most Americans actually liked as a person, is on display from the start.
After brief, formal introductions, Trump sets to work trashing Obama in paragraphs two and three. Here we consult the official White House transcript, which includes the word “applause” as often as possible.
Trump sets the tone early:
Three years ago, we launched the great American comeback. Tonight, I stand before you to share the incredible results. Jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling, confidence is surging, and our country is thriving and highly respected again. (Applause.) America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise, and America’s future is blazing bright.
The years of economic decay are over. (Applause.) The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. (Applause.) Gone too are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes, and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power, and prestige.
In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny. We have totally rejected the downsizing. We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never, ever going back. (Applause.)
There are some good moments in the Address, of course, as there always are. And we have a plethora of lies.
“Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act.”
One lie stands out. Trump claims to have always fought to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions from discrimination by health insurers. He tells the American people he always will.
This is a stunning declaration, especially if you to check the website for Health and Human Services. HHS clearly explains what should be obvious even to Trump fans listening to the president talk. Under a section titled, “Can I get coverage if I have a pre-existing condition?” we find this:
Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies can’t refuse to cover you or charge you more just because you have a “pre-existing condition”—that is, a health problem you had before the date that new health coverage starts. They also can’t charge women more than men.
If anyone is so obtuse as to not remember, the Affordable Care Act, which first created protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, was signed into law on March 23, 2010.
Trump was not president at that time.
*
THERE’S ALSO a stunning moment when Trump announces he is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh.
The First Lady, seated on the radio talk show host’s left, rises, as does Limbaugh. He’s suffering from cancer and looks both feeble and close to tears as she drapes the medal round his neck.
A Presidential Medal of Freedom for what?
So, I’m going to ignore the rest of what the president said and the rest of his lies. You can read the transcript yourself.
The question many of us will ask is, why this guy? What has Rush Limbaugh done to rate any medal?
He never served in combat, never put on the uniform, having won two draft deferments when he was young and other Americans were dying in Vietnam. The first related to his status as a college student – the second, either for an old football injury or a “boil on the butt,” as one critic later put it.
So. No. He wasn’t a hero in any physical sense.
True, Rush has been a pillar of the wedding planning industry. He’s currently married to Wife #4.
Still, not much to go on, as far as a medal.
Um…getting hooked on oxycontin…do we give Presidential Medals of Freedom for that?
Ah! Rush has defended freedom with his lips! He has defended freedom by attacking, cumulatively, over half of all Americans. And here, let’s provide a partial list. (No doubt you can find other examples if you look, or tune in daily and find out who Limbaugh hates at present.)
We know, many years ago, that he got mad at a black listener who called in and told the man, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
And you got another whiff of racism when Limbaugh had this to say back in the 80s: “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
Nor was Rush a fan of First Lady Michelle Obama. He was outraged when she pushed an initiative to get schools to provide healthier meals. She “doesn’t look like” she eats healthy, he grumbled during one show – and if you ever looked at Limbaugh in those days, you had to wonder how he had the nerve to imply that anyone else looked like they ate a lot of chips and dip.
In fact, Mrs. Obama was guilty of “uppity-ism,” he said. How dare she tell us what we should eat!
Most historians knew immediately what Limbaugh was hinting at, sanitizing an old term about “uppity n***ers,” which would include any African American who forgot his or her proper place. Such as “uppity n***ers” who wanted to sit at lunch counters, marry whomever they wanted, or vote in an election.
As for her husband, Limbaugh said there was no way Barack Obama should have been president. During a show in April 2011, he came out as a full-fledged Birther. Rush insisted that the president, “he’s got a grandmother or aunt in Kenya who said she saw him born there.” Rush was so sure of his sources he repeated his claim: “One of Obama’s relatives, aunt or grandmother, swears that he was born in Kenya. She saw it. She was there at the birth.” You figure it’s a pretty sketchy source when you’re not sure if it’s an aunt or a grandmother.
What Rush really did was help guys like Trump push the Birther myth; and when Trump ran for office, a poll showed 59% of his supporters believed Obama was born somewhere other than the United States.
Sometimes Rush fired off attacks against President Obama that didn’t make any sense at all. He insisted that Obama was going to mandate circumcision. That people wouldn’t be able “to go fishing anymore because of Obama.” He claimed the Obama administration “planned the influx of illegal alien children at the border” in 2014 and failed to screen the children for measles. That was why, he howled in 2015, that the U.S. was seeing an increase in the incidence of measles – among Orthodox Jews in New York City, for instance, none of whom sneaked across any border.
All those claims and many more won Rush multiple “Pants on Fire” ratings from the fact-checking site, Politifact.
Having scared his audience into thinking Obama was born in Kenya, and that he was also a Muslim, Rush went for the trifecta in 2009. He warned that the president was a socialist or a communist.
Hell, maybe both:
What [Obama] is talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the U.S. government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work.
Neither did Mr. Obama; and during his two terms in office he did not absorb:
1.The banking business.
2.The mortgage industry.
3.The automobile business.
4.Health care.
In other words, Rush has long been adept at slinging bullshit. Again: not a reason to give him a medal.
____________________
“Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns.”
Rush Limbaugh, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
____________________
Maybe the following comments will mark him as a hero in your mind. I’m going to tip my hand and say, I hope not.
First, Rush didn’t believe Native Americans had been nearly wiped out after 1492, or if they had, big deal. Their population had recovered. “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history,” he once insisted.
“Does this sound like a record of genocide?”
Even if he had his figures right (he didn’t), this would be roughly equivalent to saying, “There are more Jews in Israel today than at any other time in history. Does that sound like the Nazi’s had a record of genocide?”
History was never his strong suit. Limbaugh once said, “If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians.”
Rush has always held himself up as a defender of the Second Amendment. He’s not as big a fan of other rights, such as the right to protest. In 2003, when people protested against the decision to go to war with Iraq, it caused him to explode. “It’s beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-Marxist communists,” he fumed.
This is almost funny – considering President Trump has called the decision to invade Iraq, “The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country.”
More recently, Limbaugh tried to slap down the kids who helped organize “The March for Life,” after another bloody school massacre in Parkland, Florida. In a show titled“Parkland-Age Kids Are Snorting Condoms!” he tried to prove, with the least amount of logic possible, that we shouldn’t listen to young people from Parkland High School, where the massacre occurred, or young people from anywhere else, if they talked about gun control.
Here’s the “proof” he offered:
Condom snorting has become the latest challenge taking place on social media. New York Post says: “Condoms might make for safer sex – but they’re at the center of the riskiest new social media challenge. The viral video craze – dubbed ‘The Condom Challenge’ – is striking fear into parents as teenagers record themselves dangerously snorting the rubbers and pulling them through their throats.
See! All the teenagers marching for sensible gun control (and there were hundreds of thousands) had to be idiots because a few teenage idiots tried to suck condoms up their noses.
By the same logic, we shouldn’t have been listening to old white conservatives because Rush was a thrice-divorced, former drug addict.
Speaking of which, Rush was for locking people up, when it wasn’t himself. In 1994 he had this to say: “Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.”
Liberals always seemed to get Limbaugh’s easily-gotten goat. He had a freedom-loving solution to end the liberal locust plague.
From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It’s just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.
As for women, you might say Rush couldn’t muster up a great deal of respect. “Feminism,” he once grumbled, “was established so that unattractive ugly broads could have easy access to the mainstream.”
By comparison, here a liberal might have said, “Feminism was established so women could have the right to fly combat jets, win college scholarships to play soccer, have bank accounts in their own names, run in marathons if they wanted, not get sexually harassed at work, and serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, if qualified.”
Those were all battles feminists had to win.
It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.
You could listen to Rush almost any day, year-in, year-out, and come away disgusted with what you heard. When a young college student named Sandra Fluke had the nerve to testify before Congress and argue that contraceptives should be widely available and covered under Obamacare, Limbaugh went about as low as one American can go in attacking another.
From his perch on high, with a radio voice reaching the nation, he savaged the young woman:
What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We’re not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that’s right. Pimp’s not the right word. Okay, so she’s not a slut. She’s “round heeled.” I take it back.
Then, I guess you could say he “earned” his medal from Trump and the First Lady with this:
So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is – we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch [emphasis added].
Finally, in an era of Bill Cosby and Bill O’Reilly, Bill Clinton and Roger Ailes, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Steve Wynn, and, of course, Donald J. Trump, let’s not forget Rush’s respect for women, generally.
According to Limbaugh, liberal thinking was ruining the country. It was making it so you could hardly approach a woman without getting accused of sexual harassment.
Let’s just say it figures, a guy who said he could grab women by the pussy because he was famous, would give a guy like Rush, who said the following, a Presidential Medal of Freedom:
You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the Left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, so long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the Left.
Yeah, Limbaugh got that one right, although he was too clueless to understand why. Adults having consensual sex? Yeah. The “Left” is okay with that. Rush having sex with four wives in succession – a Biblical “no, no” by the way. No problem. Gay men having sex. Fine. Not anyone else’s business. Trump banging a porn star while married to the current First Lady. Sleazy, but legal. But sex without consent? No. No pedophilia. No rape. No spiking a date’s drink and having sex.
No sex unless adults give consent.
See, how easy that was?
POSTSCRIPT: I’m not the only one to be horrified by Trump’s decision to award Rush a medal for anything.
Hans Johnson, a gay man, remembers his father listening to Limbaugh’s show, and absorbing lessons in “freedom” as presented by a purveyor of hate. Johnson had come out to his parents several years before.
One day, he asked his father about Issue 3, a proposal to amend the city charter of Cincinnati, Ohio, and forbid any law that granted “minority or protected status … or other preferential treatment” to gay men, lesbians or bisexuals.” He was curious. Would his father have voted for the issue? He didn’t directly answer the question, but channeling Rush, responded,“I don’t want a gay agenda forced on me.”
Johnson saw it this way:
Scathing criticism of “homosexuals” was Limbaugh’s consistent textual preference for on-air treatment of LGBT people. He mocked gay men who died of AIDS. He promoted the false narrative that gay men recruit children for sex, telling Playboy, “I do think that if you get hold of people young enough and attempt to sway them, that homosexuality can be steered into them.”
This is what my dad imbibed on a regular basis. Limbaugh’s attempt at reversal of victimhood — that it was heterosexual people, not gays, who were the subjects of repression because their authority to lash out at people they despised was limited by law — could be read in the language of the Cincinnati policy itself. Limbaugh repeated the false accusation used to win passage of the law: that by trying to stop discrimination, gay people sought privilege, or “special rights.”
As in the “special right” not to be beaten to death like Matthew Shepard in 1998. Sixteen years later, Rush felt the need to relitigate the details of Shepard’s murder, insisting that he had read a book, or seen a book, or imagined a book, that proved Shepard was not beaten badly, tied to a fence post in Wyoming, and left to die because he was gay. The story that Shepard had been killed because he was homosexual, Limbaugh insisted, “it’s now been proven didn’t happen, but [he was] reputed to have [been] beaten up by a bunch of anti-gay bigots.”
3/20-21/20: President Trump continues to flail away as
the coronavirus spreads and the U.S. economy tanks. He can’t lie his way out of
this mess because the damage is clear and omnipresent.
President Herbert Hoover.
____________________
The
ghost of Herbert Hoover is rattling his chains.
____________________
As
of 11:43 a.m. on Saturday, the U.S. has 19,931 confirmed cases of COVID-19, exactly
19,916 more than Dr. Zero predicted on February 26. We don’t have a “pretty
close to airtight” grip on the disease as Larry Kudlow, White House economic
adviser said the same day. We don’t have much of a grip at all. And this
disease isn’t like a common cold, as Rush Limbaugh claimed. Nor is it something
that “should be compared to the flu. Because at worst, at
worst, worst case scenario it could be the flu,” as a guest on Sean
Hannity’s show said fifteen days ago.
Dr.
Zero can’t blame Obama this time – although he’s tried. He can’t brag about how
the stock market is going up because of him, and if we elect Democrats, the
market will tank. The market has tanked. And he’s in charge. The ghost
of Herbert Hoover is now rattling his chains.
Dr.
Zero can’t blame the media for his problems – although he tries – because the
media folks don’t determine how soon, or how aggressively the government starts
testing for COVID-19. The president fumbled the ball weeks ago. Reporters
didn’t rip the ball from his grip. The media doesn’t control how many
ventilators hospitals have or whether doctors and nurses have the safety
equipment they need. The free press doesn’t decide how much financial aid to
get to waves of workers who are suddenly unemployed. Trump can determine all of
that; and, to this point, he has failed.
Let’s
start with the last. The U.S. Senate, under the guidance of Majority Leader
Sen. Mitch McConnell is trying to get a vote on a rescue package – that, as of
now, has a price tag of $1 trillion. Kudlow – he of “pretty close to airtight control” fame – now says the
package may need to be much larger, perhaps $2 trillion.
The
problem is clear.
The
projected federal deficit for this year was $1 trillion before the crisis. That
was assuming solid three percent growth. The budget was already been blown.
And
may we take a moment to mention the incredible hypocrisy of those on the right?
When it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to be the Democratic nominee for
president, we heard the howling from Tucker Carlson, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and the
rest of that zany Fox News crew. The U.S. was going to end up like Venezuela! Socialism
would rot our children’s brains. Socialists are homicidal maniacs. Only Mitch and
Donald and the GOP could save us from a terrible fate.
Now,
McConnell thinks we need to pass out checks to most
Americans – “socialism” by any other name. The plan is still in the works, and
to say that fiscal conservatives are having trouble swallowing the medicine
McConnell wants them to take, is a fantastic understatement. Most adult
taxpayers would get checks for $1,200. Married couples, filing jointly, would
get $2,400. Some adults would get only $600. A family of six, with four
children, aged 17 or younger, would get an extra $2,000 ($500 per child). But
not so fast. If you made more than $75,000 last year and you’re single, or more
than $150,000, and you’re married, you’ll get less – and at some
point, depending on how much you made, you’ll get zero.
Plus,
the McConnell plan is to bail out all kinds of businesses that find themselves
in trouble. That goes double for businesses that can afford high-priced
lobbyists to roam the halls of Congress (at least when social distancing is not
in play) and fight for what they need.
*
TO
BE FAIR, Dr. Zero is not to blame for a large percentage of this mess – although we
know if Hillary had won the election, and this happened on her watch, he’d be
blasting her at every chance.
So
far, what are the damages? First, the coronavirus caseload: worldwide, as of 3:43
a.m. on Saturday morning, there were 275,452 confirmed cases. Less than ten hours
later, that number has grown to 287,239. China, if
Chinese communist officials can be believed (they can’t), has nearly halted the
spread. Italy has 47,021 confirmed cases and 4,032 deaths. Spain has 25,374 and
1,375. Iran has 20,610 and 1,566. And those mortality rates are what rattle
healthcare experts. By comparison, Germany, with 21,652 confirmed cases,
reports only 73 deaths. The United States is in sixth place: 19,931 cases, with
roughly 190 dead (if we use the figure from Johns Hopkins).
Worldometers,
has higher totals but the websites are usually more or less in sync, the only
real difference being when they update. According to the latter the U.S. now has
22,132 cases, with 282 dead.
*
WITH
EACH PASSING HOUR, the damage increases. Worst-case predictions one day prove
rosy the next. A headline Saturday, from Newsweek, sums it up: GOVERNORS
LOCKDOWN A QUARTER OF THE U.S. ECONOMY AS AMERICA HURTLES TOWARD RECESSION.
Some experts fear the U.S. has lost two million jobs in the last week.
“Recession is now unavoidable,” analysts at ING Bank warned Friday. “Our
current best guess,” they said, “is for the economy to contract by around 10
percent in the second quarter although even this figure is looking increasingly
too optimistic.”
The
bad news piles up. As Newsweek notes, California, New York, and Illinois
are locked down. If they were nations, they would represent the fifth, twelfth
and twenty-second largest economies in the world. Florida, where tourism brings
in $40 billion annually, is in store for a massive hit. The governor has ordered “all beaches,
movie theaters, concert houses, auditoriums, playhouses, bowling alleys,
arcades, gymnasiums and fitness studios to close in Palm Beach County and
neighboring Broward County.” Here in Hamilton County, Ohio, jury trials have been halted.
The Kentucky Derby is likely to be postponed or run without spectators. That
would put a huge dent in the “Big, Weird Hats for Ladies industry.” Home sales,
which hit a 13-year high in February, have been slowed by, among other
problems, a bottleneck in the supply of marble for countertops, which come from
Italy. Walmart if handing out small cash bonuses to employees, and the company
that runs Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse restaurants has promised to pay
all 190,000 hourly employees two week’s wages if they are laid off. Abercrombie
& Fitch has closed all its stores for the week.
The
Trump Organization itself has laid off workers at hotels in
Washington and New York City and at golf courses across the land. In Washington
D.C., where occupancy had tumbled to only 5%, 160 workers were handed pink
slips. In New York, the carnage was not as severe, but 51 workers were let go. In
fact, with Trump so heavily invested in tourism-related hotels and golf
resorts, and many of his properties carrying significant mortgage debt, it’s
possible that he will be in a position to order the federal government he runs
to bail himself out.
Occupancy drops - employees laid out of work.
POSTSCRIPT: South Korea seems to have slowed the spread
of COVID-19 by means of aggressive testing: 300,000 tests so far.
The
U.S., with six times the population has apparently tested only 170,000 individuals to
this point.
Asked
yesterday, if the U.S. had the needed testing capacity in this crisis, Dr. Anthony
Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
admitted, “We are not there yet.”
3/24-28/20: Fast moving events have rattled the Republic. Yet, in some
unfathomable way, Trump’s approval numbers have risen. Perhaps, the American
people are excited to be getting those extra April bailout checks!
The closest Trump gets to 50% approval.
____________________
Downplayed, dithered,
and delayed.
____________________
So,
let’s take a moment to point out what should be glaringly obvious. We don’t
have the money in the federal checking account to pay for the Trump Bailout.
What we have, really, is a plan for taxpayers to bail themselves out. That is,
we send money to ourselves and either we pay ourselves back later (higher
taxes), or we inevitably accept program cuts (Social Security, defense,
healthcare, etc.). Or we take the cowardly route and kick the can so far
down the road we never see it again. Then future taxpayers face the
task of paying for our mistakes.
This
is not to say a bailout isn’t necessary; but let’s be clear. When Donald J.
Trump found himself in a deep hole – and finally threw down the shovel he had been using to help
dig that very hole – he and
Mitch McConnell decided that a Republican brand of socialism wouldn’t be bad.
Having
said that, let’s consider how we ended up in such a deep hole. First, we should
admit that any president would have had to face the reality that we were going
to end up in a hole of some indeterminate depth.
The original sin, so to speak, was that Trump and his aides,
supported by some of the loudest voices on the right, downplayed, dithered, and
delayed in the face of a growing virus threat.
Instead
of shoveling dirt into the hole, the president wasted weeks on what Time magazine
has called “a self-congratulatory victory tour.” By the time he faced up to the
danger it was too late, except to react to a disaster he helped ensure.
HOW THE HOLE KEPT GETTING DEEPER - AND WHO HAD SHOVELS
December
8, 2019: Chinese doctors confirm the
first case of a novel coronavirus. When they warn colleagues, they are
reprimanded.
Chinese authorities don’t like “Fake News,” either.
Definition: “Fake News” is
always capitalized. “Fake News” is news governments don’t like because it makes
governments look bad.
January
21, 2020: Chinese officials concede
that human-to-human transfer of the virus is occurring.
January
22: A reporter asks President Trump if he has any
“worries about a pandemic.” Trump replies: “No, not at all. We have
it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we
have it under control.”
January
24: President Trump is
happy with the Chinese. “China has been working very hard to contain the
Coronavirus,” he says. “The United States greatly appreciates their
efforts and transparency….I want to thank President Xi!”
It takes a rare form of ignorance to believe the Chinese
regime practices anything like “transparency.”
Trump has that form.
January 30: As far as the threat of COVID-19 goes, Trump says he’s “working
very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to
have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.”
The U.S. has 6 cases.
February 7: Trump is still lavishing praise on Xi Jinping. The
Chinese leader “is strong,
sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the
Coronavirus,” he tweets. Xi “will be successful, especially as the weather
starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone…”
Rare sighting - the president in a mask.
February 10: During one of his countless campaign rallies, Trump tells
fans not to worry about the virus. “You know, in April, supposedly it dies,
with the hotter weather.”
February 20: The
president isn’t worried. His administration asks for $2.5 billion to fight the spread of the
novel coronavirus. Democrats in the House of Representatives put together a
plan to provide $8.5 billion.
February 22: The
president says – with a confidence born of ironclad ignorance – that he doubts
he’ll need $8.5 billion. “We were asking for two and a half billion, and we
think that’s a lot, but the Democrats, and, I guess, Senator Schumer wants
us to have much more than that.”
____________________
“The
coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
Rush Limbaugh
____________________
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,”
Trump tweets. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
(That prediction
really sucks.)
Same day: Noted
infectious disease expert, “Doctor” Rush Limbaugh offers his professional
diagnosis. “I want to tell you the truth about
the coronavirus,” he says during his show. “You think I’m
wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s – Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus
is the common cold, folks.”
Limbaugh goes on to say that the
survival rate for COVID-19 is “98 percent,” meaning only 1 patient in 50 dies,
“a far lower death statistic than any form of influenza [emphasis added,
unless otherwise noted], which is an annual thing
that everybody gets shots for.”
It takes the bare minimum of
effort to discover that Rush is stuffed with moose dung. According to the
Centers for Disease Control, the death rate for seasonal flu in recent years
has been:
(The numbers for the Obama years are similar, if you want to
take the time to figure out the math.)
February 25: White House economic
adviser Larry Kudlow uses his own shovel to dig a deeper hole. “We
have contained this,” he says. “I won’t say air-tight, but it’s pretty
close to air-tight.”
Wrong.
February 26: HHS
Secretary Alex Azar announces that the U.S. has fifteen confirmed
cases. Trump assures everyone that “the 15, within a couple
of days, is going to be down to close to zero.”
A reporter asks if
he’s worried the disease is spreading?
Trump offers up a
kind of nonsense answer: “No. ... No, because we’re ready for it. It is what it
is. We’re ready for it. We’re really prepared. ... We hope it doesn’t
spread. There’s a chance that it won’t spread too, and there’s a chance that it
will, and then it’s a question of at what level.”
By lunchtime, the CDC can
confirm 59 cases in the United States. The outbreak in Italy is also beginning.
Confirmed cases there rise from 124 to 374 the same day.
President Trump keeps digging , offering
up ridiculous predictions, and his advisors don’t dare contradict him. As Time puts
it later, the White House has become “an echo chamber for yes-men.”
Same day: The
echo chamber expands to include leading right-wing news organizations.
The New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch) exclaims: “The sad truth
is that global health bureaucrats use these outbreaks to push for greater
funding, with utter disregard for the truth.”
Fuck those global
health bureaucrats! Don’t listen to them!!! Our ignorant president keeps on
digging.
“It’s like a miracle.”
February 27: Trump
once again downplays the threat from
COVID-19. “It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu
shots for,” he says. “And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a
fairly quick manner.”
“It’s
going to disappear,” Trump assures everyone. “One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.”
Same
day: That evening,
“Doctor” Sean Hannity grabs a spade and helps make the hole a little wider. “Tonight, I can report the sky is absolutely falling. We’re all
doomed. The end is near. The apocalypse is imminent, and you’re all going to
die. And…it’s all President Trump’s fault,” he says with a smirk. “Or at least
that’s what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party
would like you to think.”
Hannity’s not a
bit worried.
Same
day: “Doctor” Laura Ingraham follows on Fox News that
evening, and treats viewers to a second blast of bombast. She’s even madder than
Hannity.
She
starts shoveling furiously:
If you’re worried about the
spread of the coronavirus, well, you’re obviously not alone. It’s unsettling to
see doctors and what looked like, you know, hazmat suits in China. People
quarantined hanging out of hotel windows in Italy. And, of course, your fellow
airline passengers wearing face masks. Yet more unsettling is something
happening right here in the United States. And it’s not medical. It’s political.
Democrats and their media
cronies have decided to weaponize fear and also weaponized suffering to
improve their chances against Trump in November.
“The
facts don’t matter to the Trump haters,” Ingraham yelps, because “many of them
are frankly so sick with their anti-Trump fever that they actually consider
this virus a political godsend.”
February 28: Acting
White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney makes it clear. He thinks the media is causing a stock market panic and
it’s all part of a plot to bring Trump down:
At any
particular time, 20 million people in this country are going to have the
flu. The flu kills people, it does. This is not Ebola, OK? And I’ll tell
you what that means in a sense. It’s not SARS. It’s not MERS. Why do we say
that? When you look at the severity of diseases, one of the ways you can look
at it is looking at the percentage of people who get it who die. I know that’s
sort of hard-hearted, but that’s sort of how we look at it.
COVID. Kind of like the flu….
Same day: The president is asked about Mulvaney’s comments later, about the coronavirus being the media’s and the
Democrats’ “hoax of the day.”
Trump sticks with that narrative, and keeps a firm grip on
his shovel. CNN, he sneers, is a “very disreputable network.”
I think
they are doing everything they can to instill fear in people, and I think it’s
ridiculous. They are very disreputable. Some of the Democrats are doing it the
way it should be, but some are trying to gain political favor by saying a
lot of untruths. The fact is, I made one decision that was a very important
decision, and that was to close our country to a certain area of the world that
was relatively heavily affected, and because of that, we are talking about 15
who seem to be all getting better. One is questionable.
Why should we worry????
Same day: “Doctor” Donald Trump Jr. leaps into
the fray. He’s outraged to know that his father’s foes are politicizing the
story of COVID-19. He and his dad would never stoop so low! “The playbook is
old at this point,” Dr. Jr. fumes, “but for them to try to take a pandemic and
seemingly hope that it comes here, and kills millions of people so
that they could end Donald Trump’s streak of winning is a new level of
sickness.”
The Democrats, he adds, are praying “for a disaster to happen
in the economy.” They’re “absolutely insane.”
The U.S. has 65 confirmed
cases.
“This is
their new hoax.”
February 29: At
another one of his rallies, Trump fumes, “Now the Democrats are politicizing the
coronavirus, you know that, coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did
one of the great jobs … This is their new hoax.”
At this point, the entire month of February has been
wasted because Team Trump doesn’t take the threat seriously. Instead,
they downplay the threat at every turn, ensuring that those foolish enough to
listen and believe what they say won’t take steps that might slow the spread. The
nation would have been better served, had the president done nothing more than
stand up in public and read soup can labels.
March
2: Trump tells another rally crowd: “They’re
going to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon.” He’s not worried. His fans in attendance aren’t worried. He’s still
digging the hole.
The
U.S. has 104 cases.
March
3: Trump talks about all the reasons why he
thinks the virus won’t spread. “Not only the vaccines, but the therapies.
Therapies is sort of another word for cure.”
That
doesn’t even make sense.
March
6: The president stops by the Atlanta headquarters
of the Centers for Disease Control. He’s on his way to Mar-a-Lago, where he can
hobnob with his superrich pals and squeeze in more golf. An impromptu press
conference turns out to be a cornucopia of stupidity and lies.
“Anybody
right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test,” he tells reporters. “They’re there. They have the tests
and the tests are beautiful.”
Naturally, he takes the chance
to brag:
You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He
taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super
genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are
surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, “How do you
know so much about this?” Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have
done that instead of running for president.
And don’t you hate it when
Democrats politicize this mess! Trump isn’t pleased with criticism coming from Governor
Jay Inslee of Washington. “I told Mike [Vice President Pence] not to be
complimentary of that governor because that governor is a snake.”
Classic Trump.
The U.S. has 311 confirmed
cases.
“At
worst, worst case scenario it could be the flu.”
Same
day: On his evening show, Sean Hannity decides
to downplay the threat of the virus again, and bash President
Obama in passing. He mentions the H1N1 virus, which in 2009, “killed 13, 14,
whatever thousand people.” Obama “never implemented the travel ban. They never
quarantined anybody.”
“Am
I correct?” Hannity asks his guest.
That guest is Dr. Marc Siegel, a
regular Fox News medical contributor. So you know he’s going to provide an
answer Hannity likes.
“Absolutely,” he replies. “And
over 300,000 deaths in the United States alone when all the figures
were counted.”
I don’t know what “figures” he
means. According to the CDC 60,800,000 Americans were infected by the H1N1 flu and 12,469 died.
(That would be a death rate of 1
in 4,876 cases, meaning H1N1 turned out to be a mild form of influenza.)
“And let me tell you something,”
Dr. Siegel continues, “this virus should be compared to the flu. Because
at worst, at worst, worst case scenario it could be the flu.”
Hannity’s last question is what
they call in baseball, a “grooved pitch,” meant to be hit. If you’re a
connoisseur of Fox News, you know how Dr. Siegel will answer even before his
lips start moving.
“Last question,” Hannity
says. “Is there anything the president could have done sooner,
faster, in your view, medically?”
Dr. Siegel hits that fat pitch
out of the park:
Absolutely not. He’s been having the leaders working
on it. By the way, now that the cases are starting to come, the
test kits are coming, so we’re getting them in time. I think the president
has been projecting calm. I’ve written a book on
fear. He’s been very cool….He’s the
anti-fearmonger-in-chief, Sean.
March
7: The president is plunked down at Mar-a-Lago
for the weekend. Saturday night is devoted to a birthday bash for Don Jr.’s
girlfriend. Standing next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Trump is asked
by a reporter if he’s concerned that the virus is spreading closer to
Washington D.C.
“No,
I’m not concerned at all….No, we’ve done a great job.”
March
8: On the Sunday
edition of Fox & Friends, Dr. Siegel is guest again. “I feel like
the more I learn about this [virus], the less there is to worry about,”
Pete Hegseth, one of the hosts says.
“I was about to
say the same thing,” Siegel replies. Hegseth and Siegel are now plying their
own Fox News shovels.
The U.S. has 547
confirmed cases.
March 9: The
president is focused on twin threats to the nation. That means it’s
time to tweet:
The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is
doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to
inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant.
Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.”
It’s
the Trump version of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats:” The
only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And the media. And Democrats!
“Coronavirus impeachment scam.”
Same
day: During her afternoon show on the Fox Business
channel, “Doctor” Trish Regan claims that Democrats are spreading
a false narrative. The whole COVID-19 story,
is impeachment all over again.
And like with the Mueller investigation, like with Ukraine-gate, they don’t
care who they hurt. Whether it be their need to create mass hysteria to
encourage a market sell-off unlike anything we’ve seen recently, or whether it
be to create mass hysteria to stop our economy dead in its tracks, don’t kid
yourself. They told us how much they crave a recession as a way to get rid of
Donald Trump.
A graphic appearing beside her on
the screen reads: “Coronavirus impeachment scam,” lest viewers miss the point.
She also
claims the left is resorting to “melodrama” to scare people. She says
SARS and Ebola were “far more deadly,” but the media didn’t stir up panic then.
The problem with her analogy is that while those diseases did have a higher
mortality rate, only 8,098 people (worldwide) contracted SARS.
Same
day: Doctor Hannity is fuming that
evening. This coronavirus threat? Bah! Democrats are always “pedaling
conspiracy theories and hoaxes.” He promises he’s going to “lay out some key
facts, because truth matters, context matters, especially when you’re talking
about a disease that puts fear in the hearts of people.”
He
adds: “We want the truth. We’re not the media mob.” The graphic for his broadcast
reads: “Coronavirus Hysteria.”
Those
who are accusing the president of downplaying the crisis are sick, they have
“Trump rage psychosis.”
Besides,
he says, there have been only 31 deaths from COVID-19 and “the average age of
mortality in this country is 80.”
Also, 26
people were shot in Chicago over the weekend. “I doubt you heard about it,
Hannity howls. “You notice there is no widespread hysteria about violence in
Chicago, and this has now gone on for years and years and years, and, by the
way, in Democratic-run cities we see a lot of that.”
Yes,
Democratic-run cities! Democrats are horrible human beings. And don’t you hate
it when Democrats politicize these stories!!!
We
should probably point out the obvious to Trump fans, because listening to
Hannity may well make a listener stupider. The reason there would be no
“widespread hysteria” involving Chicago shootings would be because bullets
wouldn’t hit anyone in, say, Kalamazoo or Oshkosh or Eureka, Nevada.
“And it will go away.”
March
10: Trump is still digging the hole deeper. He’s
not worried. The U.S. has only “about 600 cases, it’s
about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number
would have been substantially more …. And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a
great job with it. And it will go away.”
Asked during a press conference
how he thought he and his administration were doing in addressing this crisis,
Trump went high for once instead of low. He gave himself a “10,” on a scale of
1-10, 10 being highest.
Of course, he did.
March 11: Doctor Limbaugh is at it again, befuddling
listeners with blather. “This coronavirus,
they’re just – all of this panic is just not warranted.” Once again, he says,
“this virus is the common cold.”
At one point, he
seems mystified by the term “lethal.” “Ten times more lethal?” he asks
rhetorically. “Lethal than what? What does lethal mean? Does lethal kill you?
Does lethal infect you? Does lethal give you a temperature of 102 versus 100?
What does it do to you? It’s a meaningless comparative.”
Okay, this is an
easy question to answer: “Lethal” means it can kill you. Ten times more lethal
means you should be ten times more concerned. The Bubonic Plague is more lethal
than acne.
By day’s end, the
U.S. has 1,263 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Same day: That evening, President Trump speaks to the nation, in an attempt
to calm our worries. He butchers the presentation. First, he
says he’s banning all travelers from 26 European nations. He’s still going to
let people from Great Britain and Ireland come, because he says those countries
are doing a great job controlling the outbreak. (That happens to be wrong.)
Second, he says health insurers will cover the costs of treatment for anyone
who gets sick. (They won’t.) Third, he says the travel ban will affect trade
and “cargo.” (Strike three. Also wrong.)
Americans traveling in Europe,
who need to get home, panic. Some pay as much as $20,000 to get on the “last flights” allowed
before the ban takes effect. Trump aides have to clean up the mess. American
citizens, permanent residents, and a few others, they tell the press, will be
allowed to fly home.
Trump himself has to tweet:
“cargo” will not be banned.
(Three days later Great Britain and Ireland have to be added to
the travel ban.)
March 12: “The United States,” Trump brags,
“because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32
deaths at this point … when you look at the kind of numbers that you’re seeing
coming out of other countries, it’s pretty amazing when you think of
it.”
Trump takes a break from digging the hole
deeper, leans on his shovel, and congratulates himself.
“I don’t take any responsibility, at all.”
March
13: A reporter asks President Trump if he
takes any responsibility for delays and flaws in coronavirus testing.
“I
don’t take any responsibility at all,” he says.
Same
day: Even Fox News pundits are slowly waking
up. Dr. Sean Hannity’s diagnosis suddenly
changes. “This virus is
serious,” he says. “We’ve been telling you that from day one.”
He hasn’t.
March
14: On Fox & Friends,
Ainsley Earnhardt is as beautiful and as clueless as ever. She
isn’t worried about a little flu bug! She suggeststhat viewers
take advantage of the crisis to take a trip. “It’s actually the safest time to
fly,” she exclaims. “Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are
pretty much dead – ghost towns.”
Poor choice of words.
The U.S. has 2,726
confirmed cases.
March 15: Trump enabler Rep. Devin Nunes tells
host Maria Bartiromo, on Fox Business News, that this is, in fact, a
perfect time to get out and mingle with humanity.
There’s a lot of concerns with
the economy here [in California] because people are scared to go out. But I
will just say, one of the things you can do if you’re healthy, you and
your family, it’s a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. Likely you can get in easily.
Let’s not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and
tips to keep their small business going.
March 16: Governors in 34 states have ordered schools closed. According to Johns Hopkins University the U.S. has 4,287 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The president finally admits the virus is “very
bad.” He goes on to say, “Each and every one of us has a critical role to play
in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus. With several weeks of
focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.”
Americans, he says,
should stay away from bars, restaurants and not gather in groups larger than
ten.
It’s a colossal failure – the President of the
United States should have been sending this kind of message a month earlier.
March 17: When reporters ask why
he has adopted a more sober tone, the president denies his tone has
changed. “This is a pandemic,” he says. “I felt it was a pandemic long
before it was called a pandemic.”
It’s like he has had a shovel in his hands for weeks, but now he
claims he’s been holding a stethoscope.
Same day: At Fox News, the shills
are throwing down their shovels too. The three stooges who host Fox &
Friendsappear on split screens to
emphasize the need for social distancing. “We have a
responsibility to slow down this virus and to think of other people during
this time,” Ainsley Earhardt tells viewers, even though she said it was a great
time to fly, just three days earlier.
March 18: The United
States has 7,769 confirmed cases. Testing is still ramping up and that number is
sure to go higher.
“Perhaps that’s been the story of life.”
March 19: Trump decides to start calling
himself a “wartime president,” and the novel coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”
He doesn’t want to get blamed for the spread of the disease, so it’s time to
blame the Chinese. “It could have been stopped
right where it came from, China,” he complains.
A reporter asks the most
powerful man in the world what he thinks about reports that rich and
well-connected individuals, including professional athletes, are able to get
tested, when sick patients who might be infected cannot.
“You’d have to ask them [those
getting tested] that question,” Trump replies. “Perhaps that’s been the story
of life.”
Yeah. Trump doesn’t care.
When asked why governors in several
states are complaining that they aren’t getting the medical supplies they need,
the wartime president says, “The Federal government is
not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping.
You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
Note: Four days later, after The New York Times highlights
a “spasm of violence” directed at Asian Americans, someone gets it through
Trump’s thick cranium. Words matter and he’s been stirring up the hate.
It is very important that
we totally protect our Asian American community in the United States, and all
around the world. They are amazing people, and the spreading of the Virus is
NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form. They are working closely with us to
get rid of it. WE WILL PREVAIL TOGETHER!
March 20: The U.S. has 17,935 confirmed cases. Restaurants
and bars, gyms and movie theaters across the country are closed down.
College and professional sports have canceled all games.
Trump adviser Larry Kudlow,
who once said the administration had the disease under “pretty close to
air-tight” control, now says a rescue package of $2 trillion may
be necessary to save the U.S. from recession.
When a reporter asks Trump if
he has been sending mixed messages about the nature of the threat, the
president melts down:
March 22: The U.S.
has 26,997 confirmed cases. Governors in several states have ordered
citizens to “shelter in place.” Across the nation, 95 percent of all students,
grades K-12, have been told to stay home.
March 23: U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams warns,
“This week it’s going to get bad.” To start the morning, the U.S. has 33,276
confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus. That includes Sen. Rand
Paul, who knew he might be infected, but decided to use the Senate gym the
day before.
Four
other senators are self-isolating. During a press conference, the president
first hears the news. Told that one of the four is Sen. Mitt Romney, we get
Trump at his empathy-challenged worst.
The following states are
essentially shut down for
business:
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Indiana
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Michigan
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oregon
West Virginia
March 24: President Trump says he hopes to have the
country back up and running by Easter, April 12.
March 25: The
spread of the coronavirus is not abating. Johns Hopkins University has the U.S.
passing 66,000 cases. Another tally has
fewer cases, but 944 deaths and 1,452 patients in serious or critical
condition.
March 26: The terrible news becomes official. In one
week, 3.28 million Americans have filed for unemployment.
According to Johns Hopkins
University, the worldwide death toll stands at 23,067, or 4.5% of known cases
– basically 1 death for every 22 patients.
That level of lethality would
be crippling to human society; but some countries are doing far better than
others. In Italy, 1 in 10 patients has died. In Germany, the toll is 1 in every
200 cases.
The U.S. is likely to
overtake both Italy and China, possibly tomorrow, for most cases of any
country. A second website, which updates at different times of day than Johns Hopkins,
but usually differs only slightly in the end, already has the United States at
80,071 cases. The death toll in the U.S. stands at 1,151, with another 2,112
patients in serious or critical condition.
That’s about $2.18 trillion
more than Trump said he thought he’d need to handle the virus on February 22.
And it’s official. With
President Trump having spent weeks denying that there was any real threat to
the U.S., either health-wise or economic, we blow past China and take the lead
in confirmed cases of the virus.
March 28: As of Saturday morning, Johns Hopkins
University reports that
the United States has 104,860 confirmed cases.
The following states, covering more than half of the U.S. population, have now
issued “stay-at-home” orders: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North
Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Washington D.C. has issued the
same order.
At least ten other states have
issued less-stringent warnings and orders, including, for example, Florida – which is banning tourists from several
states farther north and along the coast. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has balked
so far at ordering any closing orders. Several cities, including Dallas,
Houston, and San Antonio, have had to step up and issue “stay-at-home” orders
of their own.
Schools in 48 states are
now closed completely, while select districts in Iowa and Maine remain
open.
Alaska schools are closed into May; Hawaii schools are close into April; and
tourists are being told to stay away.
A total of 55.1 million students have been
affected, out of a total school population in this country of 56.6 million.
Since your child is probably stuck at home, and
needs some math work, ask them to figure out what percentage of all students in
the U.S. are out of school.
Divide 55.1 million by 56.6 million for the
correct answer.
It’s 97.3%.
Rush got rich; people who listened to his "flu" schtick got sick.
Same day: Rush
Limbaugh says he sees see a silver lining despite the spreading plague. He assures
listeners that the United States of America is lucky to have Trump explaining COVID-19 to us all.
This makes sense only to the “Dittoheads.”
Says Rush:
I think it is imperative that we
have somebody like Donald Trump, who is outside the establishment expert class,
who has a history of solving problems, to actually lead the country through
this.
You know, we’ve talked about the
deep state all these years since Trump was elected, the Trump-Russia collusion,
the FBI — well the deep state extends very deeply. And the American people did
not elect a bunch of health experts that we don’t know. We didn’t elect a president
to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know. And how do we know
they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they have
been at the job for a while, and they are at the CDC, and they are at the NIH.
Yeah, they have been there, and they are there, but have there been any job
assessments for them? They are just assumed to be the best because they are in
government. These are all kinds of things I have been questioning. And I have
been watching people routinely accept whatever the authorities say.
No dice for Rush. He’s going to
listen to the Orange Buffoon, instead. This might be funny, if so many
Americans weren’t getting sick.
