The Good Doctor

No one likes to deal with cold hard facts, which is why Dr. Fauci is walking a tightrope at the White House.  This was made painfully apparent the other night as Jake Tapper grilled him on State of the Union.  The good doctor tried his best to dance around the subject of the slow response, but in the end admitted that "if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives."  This wasn't what our malevolent narcissistic president wanted to hear, retweeting the puerile statement, "Time to #FireFauci."

The problem of course isn't Fauci, but a president who continues to look at his Friends and Fox and conservative social media sites for advice.  This time, how to handle Fauci?  He's apparently in constant communication with Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh and his favorite pastor, Robert Jeffress, to name a few.  Hardly the kind of inner circle that should make any of us feel comfortable.

Jeffress, who primarily uses television to communicate his toxic brand of "faith," felt little pinch from churches being closed across the country.  Needless to say, the wily pastor was overjoyed with the President singling him out yesterday, no doubt sending his viewing audience through the roof.

Of course, Trump likes these pernicious pundits and pastors because they provide him a direct link to his peevish audience, who is sick of tired of eggheads like Dr. Fauci.  The #FireFauci movement started quite sometime ago, when these pundits began actively promoting the notion that "data-slaves" like him are part of an intellectual deep state determined to bring down their great leader.  Of course, Rush tried to hedge by saying that he doesn't want to accuse anybody of anything, but that's exactly what he did, and now Dr. Fauci has an increased security attachment.

His only sin is speaking the truth.  We could have done more to mitigate this virus back in February, but Trump was too busy listening to hacks like Limbaugh and stirring up his rallies to treat the outbreak seriously.  However, that wasn't what Dr. Fauci said.  He was steered into making a statement he didn't want to make, and attached a half dozen qualifiers to it, which the mainstream press conveniently chose to ignore.  So, once again he is persona non grata in the White House.

VP Pence had retracted his earlier pronouncement that task force members would be limited in their public communication, but you know that Dr. Fauci will be put on a much shorter leash after his interview with Jake Tapper.

You realize how difficult it is for these experienced epidemiologists to work with someone like Trump.  He isn't interested at all in their data collection, he just wants to know the magic moment when he can re-open the economy.  It does seem as though the warmer, more humid weather is slowing down the virus, but this is just speculation.  The virus won't completely go away and will most likely resurface this fall and plague us once again by winter.  This is the way these viruses tend to work.

Unfortunately, Trump doesn't want to increase testing, which would allow health experts to get a better sense of the spread of this contagion and be better prepared to deal with it in October.  Trump just wants to recreate a sense of normalcy, preferably one where Fortune 500 companies hire back all their employees and the Dow surges to new heights.

For whatever reason, the Dow has been complying with Trump wishes, having gained more than 5000 points since its low of 18,600 on March 23.  He prefers we look at this rather than the mounting death toll, which has surpassed 22,000 an is likely to hit 30,000 long before the Dow does. 

As I've said before, it is nonsense to base your political success on the stock markets.  However, we are looking at a guy who lied to get himself on the Forbes 400 list back in the 1980s.  For him, these measures of wealth are the standards by which he judges himself.

You would think this would put him at odds with the Evangelists who so openly adore him, but surprisingly not.  This is because televangelists like Robert Jeffress are fabulously wealthy themselves.  His $18 million may not measure up to Trump, but give him a few more years and he might just amass a wealth like Kenneth Copeland, who tried to blow coronavirus away.  His wealth is conservatively estimated to be $300 million.

We can be thankful we still have Dr. Fauci on the coronavirus task force, even if it seems his days are numbered.  Most states have already taken matters in their own hands, given the slow response from the White House.  If indeed the good doctor is fired, he will no doubt resurface in New York or California to help guide efforts in getting the necessary testing done to better handle the virus when it resurfaces next fall.  Gov. Newsom has greatly extended California's role in this battle.  We are far from out of the woods, unlike Trump and his conservative cronies would like us all to believe.