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Trump's Last Stand

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I thought it was an April Fools joke at first, but apparently Trump actually admitted he screwed the pooch if not in so many words.  He now claims he knew all along the severity of the crisis, but wanted to be America's cheerleader, downplaying the crisis so as not to be a negative nelly.  I guess this was his way of saying he didn't want to create a panic.

Of course he quickly turned to hyperbole by saying this is "the worst thing that the country has probably ever seen," discounting the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 that saw over 675,000 deaths in America alone.  We can only hope this one won't be so bad, as that was a far more significant percentage of the population.  Or, the fact that we went through a horrible Civil War in which 25 percent of the Southern white male population was eliminated, as well as countless others, mostly due to disease and starvation.

No, Donald, this isn't the worst thing the country has ever seen, but you made it demonstrably worse than it should be with your inaction when it really mattered.

There were a number of measures the president could have taken in the early days of this pandemic like invoke the Defense Production Act so that industries could have started making ventilators, masks and other necessary medical equipment back in February, rather than quibbling over potential contracts now.  It seems Trump thinks he can get a better deal than the one GM and Ventec offered him.

Maybe Russia has a few spare ventilators?  All though, it appears Vlad was in denial too and he may need those ventilators for the surging number of cases in his country now that the cat is out of the bag.

Leave it to Mitch to supply the morose president with a way out of the crisis by blaming our lack of preparedness on the Democrats for pursuing impeachment.  No matter how bad things get on their watch, the Republicans will find a way to blame this crisis on the Democrats, as they have blamed every other crisis over the past 40 years on the opposing party.

However, these are words the president will have a hard time taking back.  It was a lengthy press briefing that even left reporters like Jim Acosta agape, as it seemed for once the president understood the magnitude of the crisis and realized he was virtually powerless to do anything about it at this point.  He went on to admit the death toll could easily exceed 100,000, but tried to spin this into a victory of some sort by saying it could have been much worse if they had done nothing about it.   He can't stop cheerleading, and neither can his sycophants who continue to praise his so-called bold actions.

There is nothing bold about what he did.  He downplayed the crisis because it didn't suit his political interests.  He genuinely thought this was something that would go away with a few deaths here and there, but nothing worse than the flu.  Those were his own words back on February 26 when he created this ridiculous task force, headed by Mike Pence, which has failed to meet the needs of the hardest hit states.

You would think the president would pick his Surgeon General to lead such a task force, and put the sharpest minds at work on the crisis.  Even Ben Carson, a retired doctor, would have made more sense than Pence.  Instead, we get sessions led with prayers, and Dr. Fauci's early warnings being casually dismissed in favor of more optimistic forecasts.  However, even Dr. Birx is now forced to admit the extreme severity of the situation and that there isn't much we can do at this point except stay vigilant.

We even learn that Trump had set up a shadow task force led by Jared Kushner, whose mission was to do damage control in the wake of the accelerating case and death numbers and lack of federal relief.  Jared called it an "entrepreneurial approach," drawing praise for Dr. Birx no less.  Give us a fucking break!

There will be no more comparisons to the swine flu, as this pandemic will dwarf those numbers in the coming weeks.  We will crest 200,000 reported cases by the end of the day, with deaths rising rapidly as hospitals become inundated with patients.  As has been the case in Italy and Spain, there aren't enough ventilators and safety equipment to go around to stop the spread of the disease in hospitals, which is the most painful part of this ordeal.  Nurses and orderlies are forced to using trash bags and reusing their face masks, as they do repeated 12-hour shifts.  This makes them an easy mark for the virus, as their tiredness and lack of proper sanitation reduces their immune defenses.

What does our dear leader have to say about all this?  "This is really easy to be negative about. But I want to give people hope too.  I'm a cheerleader for the country -- we are going through the worst thing the country has probably ever seen."  Remember those words.

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