Trump Is Flunking His Final Test
Watching Trump's response to the Wuhan coronavirus has been like watching the beginning of a really bad pandemic thriller.
by Justin Rosario
2020 was always going to be a shit storm of epic proportions. Trump's desperation to steal the election guaranteed it. But now that the Wuhan coronavirus is on the brink of both becoming a pandemic and triggering the economic meltdown we were already on the edge of, the Trump regime will promptly implode at the worst possible moment.
We already know that Trump and his mob of sycophants and thugs are not good at dealing with emergencies. Dealing with emergencies requires the ability, at a minimum, to govern the day to day activities of the nation.
Trump has left so many positions, from top level to minor paper pushing, unfilled that a significant part of the federal government is paralyzed. Of those who are left, many are further paralyzed by the fact the people Trump has put in charge are not there to do the People's work but rather undermine the mission of their agencies. Or at loot the place for themselves and their friends.
As with many (Most? All?) autocratic dictators, Trump has been shrinking the government in order to make it more reliant on himself. All power must flow from the Dear Leader or else. But at the end of the day, Trump is both lazy and stupid so he is not capable of running an organization as vast as the United States government. There's a reason he bankrupts every business he ever touches.
Covid 1984
Watching Trump's response to the Wuhan coronavirus has been like watching the beginning of a really bad pandemic thriller. There's a regular joke on various podcasts that if a writer had turned in a script 6 years ago with the kind of crap we see daily from the Trump regime, they would be laughed out of the room for being too unrealistic.
And yet, the galaxy brains at the Trump White House came up with a half-baked plan to send potentially infected Americans to a military base in Alabama with fake hospital rooms:
The center is used for training. It has isolation hospital rooms — located in a former Army hospital building — but they are mostly just props, with fake equipment and light switches that exist only as paint on walls.
Meanwhile, federal officials never contacted the town’s hospital, Regional Medical Center, about handling covid-19 patients, said Louis Bass, the hospital’s chief executive.
Sometime during all of this confusion, the untrained HHS workers sent in to welcome the 328 people evacuated Americans from the Diamond Princess cruise ship were allowed to leave the quarantine area and disperse back into the general population in different parts of the country. None of them wore protective gear while interacting with the potentially infected people.
This is, quite literally, how one would go about ensuring the spread of a highly infectious disease.
Also, one would dismantle the entire pandemic response infrastructure built up by the previous president simply to poke a finger in his eye. That's a thing that really happened.
Not to be deterred by reality, Trump held a press conference to announce that everything was just fine and, why, the virus would be gone, like a miracle!, in no time at all!
Then he sent out his various liars to sell the same story...
...and to attack the press for reporting on Trump's incompetence:
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney claimed the media is covering the coronavirus outbreak only because it’s “all about” damaging President Donald Trump.
“The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president. That’s what this is all about,”
In other words, do not believe anything you are seeing. Everything is fine. Everything is under control. The Dear Leader is strong and America is safe. Go back to sleep.
Oh, and if a pandemic occurs, it's Nancy Pelosi's fault for weaponizing the virus so vote Trump in November.
There She Blows!
I have written before about how utterly screwed we're going to be when the economy went belly up. Because Trump has been abusing his power to artificially inflate the economy to boost his reelection chances, there's very little left in the tank to keep things going in case of an actual emergency.
An emergency like, for instance, a global almost-pandemic that is crippling international trade?
I'm going a drop a mea culpa here. A little over a week ago, I thought the markets were being ridiculous by panicking over the Wuhan coronavirus. That was before I was aware of just how much global trade had been truncated because of it.
The outbreak has already roiled production lines in China, prompting industry giants including Apple, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola to warn of hits to their manufacturing efforts. The market realized over the past week that rate cuts won't "insulate it against supply-side concerns" and eliminate heightened market volatility, Shah said in an emailed statement.
On Friday night's show, Rachel Maddow discussed how airports around the world are putting workers on unpaid leave due to a "massive slump" in both cargo and passenger traffic. Clearly, the markets are not freaking out because the press is exaggerating the threat of a pandemic. Corporations, who are not known for giving the slightest damn about their employees, are cancelling events and restricting travel to prevent the spread of the virus.
So, this is not a mob mentality thing that's happening. It's a real economic disruption and not only have we already depleted our tool kit, the people in charge have no idea what to do.
Among the options being considered are pursuing a targeted tax cut package, these people said. They have also discussed whether the White House should lean even harder on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, though the central bank on Friday afternoon said it would step in if necessary.
The interest rates have already been dropped to around 1.5% after cutting it three times last year to boost Trump's chances to be reelected. That gives us very little room to maneuver now.
Worse, the deficit is already at a trillion dollars which means another tax cut would push it up towards what it was during the height of the 2008-2009 crash. And that's before we actually hit the recession that will inevitably come. We could see deficits top over two trillion for the first time in history courtesy of the Republican Party's gross mismanagement.
Trump and his regime of imbeciles, are, naturally, making the panic among investors worse by the day:
That's the kind of leadership the markets need to see! You can tell they're taking this seriously.
By putting Trump's reelection ahead of every other consideration, Trump and regime of lickspittles are putting the entire globe in danger.
This Is All About The Election
The bottom line here is that Trump does not care at all about how many people get sick or what effect the Wuhan coronavirus has on the global economy beyond the impact on his reelection.
If you doubt this, look at how he is responding to the virus. He is not doing anything to actually combat its spread. There is no international coordination to contain it. There is no meaningful effort to work with other countries to slow it down.
We're not even testing on a mass scale for the virus because the Trump regime hasn't seen fit to make that a priority.
Trump has, however, muzzled the CDC:
This move came after a CDC official said that community spread of the virus was almost inevitable and that people should prepare for "significant disruption" to everyday life if and when it hits. A normal president would look to reassure the public that the government would do everything possible to manage this outbreak and encourage people to prepare in an orderly fashion without panicking.
Instead, Trump is putting multiple people (who are not experts) in charge, blaming the media for covering his regime's incompetence, and lying about how severe the threat is.
In case you were confused, having multiple people "in charge" means that no one person can be blamed when nothing gets done. They'll be able to endlessly pass the buck until people give up trying to hold anyone accountable. Accountability is for Democrats, not Republicans.
At the same time, Trump is doing nothing to prepare for an economic downturn. He's simply trying to stick a finger in the dyke long enough to win the election. After that? Who cares? It's not like he can be impeached. Republicans have already proven they will let him get away with criminal activity so why not let the country drown?
We are watching a corrupt and grossly incompetent regime scramble to hold everything together just long enough to bluff their way through an election they're already trying to steal. If the virus gets out of control or the economy implodes, or both happen at the same time, there will be no way to "win" without openly rigging the election which would trigger riots.
This is Trump's final test as president and he is failing it, badly. It would be a terrible irony if Trump were brought down by his own insane need to sabotage his own government. Too bad so many will suffer to make it happen.
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Donald Trump's God Is Abandoning Him
Trump prays to the stock market (literally). And now it is abandoning him. - by Ben Cohen
“Among the options being considered are pursuing a targeted tax cut package, these people said.”
I’m surprised that’s “among” the options. By which I mean, I’m surprised Republicans are actually considering any other options since “cut taxes“ is usually the ONLY answer they have to any problem regardless of what it is.
Mick Mulvaney;
“The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president.“
To be fair, Mick, they‘re probably very right about that.