Oh fuck the October surprise is going to be Trump announcing a vaccine is ready and we're not going to find out until the day after the election that it's not actually ready or it has dangerous side effects or something.
— The face toucher (@JonIsAwesomest) May 4, 2020
Two problems with this theory: One, Trump’s personal timeline doesn’t extend beyond the end of the current week, if that far. And while Trump is ‘In Charge’, the GOP doesn’t have any control over forward planning. Assuming they might want to spring such an October Surprise — and I’m open to that assumption — they couldn’t tell Trump about it without him announcing it during his next television appearance. And if they don’t tell Trump, they have to work under the assumption he’ll make such an announcement anyways, sometime between tonight and the next serious stock market decline.
Second, while Trump’s (very) Base will certainly lap up such an announcement, the all-important ‘swing voter’ is getting increasingly dubious. It would take a miracle of timing to announce a vaccine in time to affect November voting (especially since there will be an unusually high percentage of mail-in ballots, beginning sometime in mid-October) without a significant backlash before November 3.
The Oval Office Occupant has six more months to fustercluck every Repub plan for the election, and by Murphy the Trickster God he is going to seize the day.
NEW –> 34 days of pandemic: Inside Trump’s desperate attempts to reopen America
My latest with @jdawsey1 @yabutaleb7@costareports
& @bylenasun on the federal government's April pivot to reopeninghttps://t.co/uJoAqQEg5i— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 2, 2020
The epidemiological models under review in the White House Situation Room in late March were bracing. In a best-case scenario, they showed the novel coronavirus was likely to kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. President Trump was apprehensive about so much carnage on his watch, yet also impatient to reopen the economy — and he wanted data to justify doing so.
So the White House considered its own analysis. A small team led by Kevin Hassett — a former chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers with no background in infectious diseases — quietly built an econometric model to guide response operations.
Many White House aides interpreted the analysis as predicting that the daily death count would peak in mid-April before dropping off substantially, and that there would be far fewer fatalities than initially foreseen, according to six people briefed on it…
For Trump — whose decision-making has been guided largely by his reelection prospects — the analysis, coupled with Hassett’s grim predictions of economic calamity, provided justification to pivot to where he preferred to be: cheering an economic revival rather than managing a catastrophic health crisis.
Trump directed his coronavirus task force to issue guidelines for reopening businesses, encouraged “LIBERATE” protests to apply pressure on governors and proclaimed that “the cure can’t be worse than the problem itself” — even as polls showed that Americans were far more concerned about their personal safety.
By the end of April — with more Americans dying in the month than in all of the Vietnam War — it became clear that the Hassett model was too good to be true. “A catastrophic miss,” as a former senior administration official briefed on the data described it. The president’s course would not be changed, however. Trump and Kushner began to declare a great victory against the virus, while urging America to start reopening businesses and schools…
The span of 34 days between March 29, when Trump agreed to extend strict social-distancing guidelines, and this past week, when he celebrated the reopening of some states as a harbinger of economic revival, tells a story of desperation and dysfunction….
Trump doesn’t care about ‘science’. Trump has a larger agenda, serving his half-understood Bad Father God, ‘The Market’:
… As April began with the extension of social distancing, tensions grew within the administration between the doctors and scientists advising the response and the economic and political aides with longer-standing relationships with the president.
Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, exerted significant influence over the coronavirus task force, setting the agenda and determining seating arrangements for meetings as well as helping to orchestrate press briefings. Short also is one of the White House’s most vocal skeptics of how bad the pandemic would be. He repeatedly questioned the data being shared with Trump, and in internal discussions said he did not believe the death toll would ever get to 60,000 and that the administration was overreacting, damaging the economy and the president’s chances for reelection, according to people who have heard his arguments.
Day after day, Short pressed other officials to reopen the entire country, encouraging more risks to get the economy humming again. Short succeeded in pushing for Trump to resume travel, as Pence had done, over the objections of some officials, who argued that leaving Washington endangers the principals and their staffs. Trump plans to visit a mask manufacturing plant in Arizona on Tuesday.
Short aligned with Hassett, Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, among others, who shared the belief that the economy had been shut down for long enough. A former senior administration official briefed on the internal dynamics described the consensus mind-set among this bloc as believing health officials were “like the school nurse trying to tell the principal how to run the school.”…
Trump had been agonizing over the economy, watching the number of Americans filing unemployment insurance claims climb each week. He fretted about the unemployment rate rising to 15 percent or even higher, a milestone that advisers warned him would seriously jeopardize his reelection.
In a private April call with supporters on immigration, Ken Cuccinelli, a top immigration official, said that the numbers would be “so stunning . . . that it will be a messaging hit.”…
Trump heard that message from others as well. He held regular calls with a group known internally as “Kudlow’s guys” — generational peers with high media profiles, including Laffer, financier Steve Forbes and economist Stephen Moore.
“Get open, get open, get open — we kept pressing that point,” Moore said. Otherwise, he recalled telling Trump, “You’ll have a mini-Great Depression. You’ll have body bags of dead businesses and jobs that will never be resurrected.”…
… Trump formally embraced the quarantine protesters on April 17 with a trio of all-caps tweets: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA.”
Inside the White House, there was disappointment about Trump’s tweets since many of his aides had hoped to frame his decision on reopening as a presidential test he had met with calm. Privately, several of them acknowledged that the “LIBERATE” tweets brought Trump back into the realm of conspiracy and anger, which he considers safe harbor when he feels boxed in…
On April 23, the day after his campaign team’s polling intervention, Trump continued with his usual behavior. During a lengthy and at times hostile question-and-answer session with reporters, Trump mused aloud about being treated with ultraviolet light or injecting bleach or another household disinfectant into the body to cure the coronavirus.
“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks [the virus] out in a minute — one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside, or almost a cleaning,” Trump said, referring to the human body…
This is ‘Downfall of A Dictator’ material — the sort of stories you’d expect to read describing the last days of Idi Amin or Nicolae Ceaușescu. Or, you know… that guy from the many, many movie parodies.
Bill Gates wrote an op-ed saying it could be a once in a century pandemic the same day Mick Mulvaney said the media was only covering it to hurt Trump and RNC chair accused Democrats of stoking fears of coronavirus for political purposes. https://t.co/e1LyhpC8Qk
— andrew kaczynski? (@KFILE) May 2, 2020
feebog
Trump drew a bad hand, decided to run a bluff and has now gone all in with a loser. Reopening in Florida, Georgia and Texas is going to be a shitstorm in a month. He thinks the polls are bad now…
Roger Moore
This is always a giant warning sign. Good policy starts with the best evidence and then moves on to deciding what to do. Starting with what you want to do and then finding facts to justify it is asking for disaster.
Baud
I have no idea why the announcement of a vaccine, true or not, would affect the vote of any significant number of people.
MisterForkbeard
Jesus H. Christ, Haberman is awful. The fact that you can make this your headline without simultaneously noting that scientists, media and Democrats were screaming about it is just basic journalistic malpractice.
It’s a lie. Say it’s a lie.
waspuppet
There are times when that is perfectly appropriate.
ChrisS
@feebog:
And Mitch sees that possibility and instead of redoubling their efforts to manage this cluster better, they’re going to try and install as many federalist hacks as they can.
MisterForkbeard
@Roger Moore: Yep. See Republican tax cuts, the Iraq war, all of republican policy, etc.
MattF
The people who would believe Trump about a vaccine are the ones who would vote for him anyhow.
Roger Moore
@feebog:
You’re giving him way too much credit. This isn’t a result of bad luck for Trump. A global pandemic is something we could, should, and did plan for back when we had a competent president. Trump trashed all that preparation and put us in a situation where a manageable outbreak blew up into a catastrophic one. Failure to plan is planning to fail.
MisterForkbeard
On a somewhat related note, the President’s malpractice has infected my local county. I live in the northern bay area, and our NextDoor feed has a huge thread both about “re-opening” that’s filled with misinformation (and complaining about ignoring ‘teh constitution’) as well as a conspiracy theory that the government is going after them… and deleted the previous thread asking for information.
Because the previous thread owner had realized she was wrong and took down her own post. And said as much in the new one.
This has not affected the conspiracy theory.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Every day, this guy finds a way to astound me with his awfulness. He’s a force of nature. I can’t think of anybody else I’ve ever known of in my lifetime without any redeeming qualities at all. He’s up there with John C. Calhoun and Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms as the worst excuses for humanity that our political system ever coughed up.
MattF
@MisterForkbeard: Via jwz.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Trump is doubling down with the stupid by insisting that a virus will be found by the end of the year, because his “smart brain, smarter than the scientists,” tell him so.
Predictably, Trump loyalists are praising this bullshit as an example of the president leading the country by being optimistic.
His staffers and enablers will fan whatever embers result from this to puff up the lie that Trump’s strong, bold, resolute leadership got us through the crisis.
It will work with the faithful; whether it resonates with more than this is uncertain. But this is how Trump rolls. He only knows how to operate from bullshit mode.
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
It’s conservatism in a nutshell. They know the decision they want- the rich get richer, the poor get crushed- and manufacture the justification to suit the circumstances.
germy
No matter how shitty #45 does, there’s always help from the corporate media. Even their employees are noticing:
Of course, Ms. Maslin has her own ideas about Joe Biden:
Quite a compliment!
Miss Bianca
Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ. No, just as describing any action you see as a violation as a “rape” does not make anything but an actual RAPE a rape, you do not talk about “body bags of dead businesses” when there are ACTUAL FUCKING BODY BAGS being filled with ACTUAL FUCKING DEAD BODIES, you soulless prick lice.
Man, now I know they really believe that corporations are people.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: It won’t. Everyone will know he’s lying. Especially his base, who love him for it.
Jeffro
And yet, it’s pretty much the GOP playbook for governing…
Shalimar
At this point. if Trump announced a vaccine I would want an investigstion of how much stock he has in the company that makes it.
Jeffro
@waspuppet: Exactly. Every smart principal listens to the school nurse (intently! frequently!) and knows that while the building can do without the principal for a day, it cannot do with the nurse.
patrick II
In the runup to the Iraq war the Intelligence services were not creating the type of information to justify war on Iraq, so in August of 2002 the “White House Iraq Group” was formed, headed by Andrew Card, and presented a more dangerous rendition of Iraqi intelligence.
Same stuff, different day. If a republican white house doesn’t like what the experts say, pay someone to tell them what they want to hear.
Just Chuck
It’s never been clearer: Republican policies kill.
clay
@waspuppet: Dr. Crusher was the only person on the Enterprise who could order Picard around.
MattF
And, if a vaccine made it all the way through all the required safety and efficacy tests, everyone would know. These things aren’t done in seecrit laboratories.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: This. I hope scientists do invent, fully test and safely deploy a vaccine by the end of this week. But it sure as hell won’t be Trump and his pack of incompetent frauds who invent it or manage the roll-out, regardless of when and if that happens. There’s little we can count on in this cruel world, but those fuck-ups remaining irredeemable fuck-ups is one of them.
MattF
@Just Chuck: And, if clinging to power means a few hundred thousand additional deaths, it’s a price Republicans are ready to pay.
germy
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: Indeed. There are plenty of articles like this one linking to the various vaccine research projects underway.
mrmoshpotato
@Roger Moore: Dump and data so close together. Haha, give me a fucking break! Mobster manchild doesn’t even read his daily briefings and thought stealing the Presidency would give him adulation.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: Weirdly, telling elderly Republican voters that they are happy to die for the cause doesn’t seem to be working. It’s almost like decades of pounding the IGMFY message doesn’t train your voters to want to be sacrificed.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
Even if vaccine development were normally secretive, you know Trump will be ballyhooing every positive step along the development pipeline. He just can’t help himself.
Ella in New Mexico
For someone who was dumbstruck when he literally stumbled into becoming the President of the United States, this guy is managing, single handedly, to outright destroy his re-election on an hourly basis.
Seems crazy until you realize that this is exactly how every single business or deal he has been involved in has had the same exact fate, for the same exact reason: When things start to go bad he digs in, micro-manages, and keeps doing more of the stuff that brought him to the brink of bankruptcy in the first place. Then he flees from the collapsing wreckage blaming everyone but himself.
His sickness, his bloated ego, inability to change tactics, and in the past his ability to be bailed out before he himself gets hurt, burned them all to the ground. We’re just watching a lifetime pattern play itself out.
One of the never-Trump R political consultants on Twitter (Stuart Stevens?) suggested if his staff could just make him STFU for a month his numbers might go back up enough to put him back in competitive territory with Biden in the fall.
But no. He can’t stop. He won’t stop. He’s a wrecking ball. (apologies to Miley Cyrus)
I, for one, am truly enjoying the show, as grating on the nerves it is to witness.
MattF
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yeah, it’s a thing. ‘This Kool-Aid… it tastes… funny… ‘.
Chyron HR
@germy:
I like the person in the responses claiming Biden won’t make it through his first term because he has “dimension”.
Just Chuck
@germy:
Hey Maslin, it’s not exactly the Ninteenth Masonic Seal Of Arcane Revealed Knowledge that Biden has a fucking stutter
The Moar You Know
@germy: They sure are. China will just give it away! How the hell are you supposed to make a buck off of suffering when there’s people out there like that?
(and seriously, China will just give it away, at least to the developing nations, because they understand the value of goodwill. Which is something Americans, and I don’t just mean Donald Trump, have absolutely forgotten)
rp
This comment perfectly encapsulates the media’s efforts to normalize Trump. EVERYONE knows — and states openly — that Trump is driven more by his reelection prospects than any desire to save American lives, and yet this isn’t treated as the biggest scandal in the history of the U.S. I’m not blaming this particular writer because the problem is widespread; it’s just that this quote is an ideal example.
Brachiator
It’s also campaign season, and Trump is pulling every trick he knows.
On a related note, why the courts are important.
Loyalty to the Republican Party, and to Trump, is always rewarded.
patrick II
Pompeo is now saying that China withheld information about the coronavirus at first so they could stock up on materials before the danger was known to other countries.
First, regardless of China’s intention, the U.S. was warned by its intelligence services so China’s efforts to suppress knowledge while they gathered resources (if that was their intention) only worked because we have a president who doesn’t read his intelligence briefings, plus other public sources speculating on the danger of the new virus in early January.
Second, when we found out about the danger of the coronavirus, the United States government took steps to assure that needed supplies that were manufactured here stayed in-country regardless or contracts with foreign countries. That’s ok for us, but not for other countries I guess.
And third, this virus is so contagious in would have taken a miraculous early reaction to contain it in an urban area like Wuhan under any circumstances. The people without symptoms spreading the disease happened there too.
Donald’s self-dealing stories of his heroic actions to stop the virus needs bad guys, to blame. Right now it’s China’s turn. The damage to our relations with them to help Donald redirect blame is just an unfortunate byproduct, as is his relationship with WHO, the failing Governors, and Mayors, and the unfortunate honest employees of the federal government.
Not to mention the million infected and soon to be 70,000 dead. It’s not Donald’s fault.
germy
mrmoshpotato
If I had a Twitter account, I’d ask Janet when the burden of proof stopped being completely the responsibility of the accuser.
Jeffery
Thirty million people currently unemployed will be back to work by November? Doubtful.
Mai naem mobile
@ChrisS: I know Mitch McConnell is an asshole but the guy had polio as a child. He doesn’t get the results of a pandemic? He’s forcing a Senate ,made up of lots of old people with underlying conditions , to come back to vote for judges. It’s not he can’t wait till September to get the judges in. He is risking the lives of his fellow GOPrs. And let’s not forget the Senate staffers. They’re not all 20-30 year old hipsters. Plenty of middle aged folks in that bunch as well. Incredibly short sighted. Makes you wonder if Mitch doesn’t have all his marbles like Trumpov.
Hungry Joe
In mid-March an old friend died suddenly. He went to the ER with stroke-like symptoms — and it was, indeed, a stroke. Two days later he died of a massive heart attack while in the ICU. Yesterday his wife told us that he had been feeling bad for about a week: body aches, sleight/moderately off-and-on fever. She thinks he could well have died from Covid-19, but he wasn’t tested, so we’ll never know. This thing could be a LOT bigger than most people think it is.
bemused
A local guy wrote a virus comment on article of stay-at-home restriction protesters calling it tyranny. He is horrified about the complete disregard of the Bill of Rights and people that support that. At the same time he applauded food and grocery workers keeping shelves filled.
I like Tom Nichols tweet repeating from his book “The Death of Expertise”, people reject expertise as a way of saying that no one can tell them what to do. “You’re not the boss of me” which made me laugh/cry because that is how I’ve thought of these angry, proudly ignorant luddites. Nichols also stated they believe “freedom” means telling everyone no like a stage toddlers go through.
patrick II
The answer to that is, back when Donald said there would be a vaccine soon, Dr Fauci said it would take a year or more (while Donald stood behind him obviously miffed). From February to the end of the year (if it happens) is nearly a year. Fauci was right, and Donald’s “very soon” assessment completely wrong, and the fact that we didn’t take the steps necessary to suppress the outbreak of the disease in the meantime cost tens of thousands of lives is all on Donald.
CindyH
@Mai naem mobile:
it’s easy – McConnell is evil and power is what feeds him.
Roger Moore
@Ella in New Mexico:
This is something that seems like it ought to be true, but I don’t think it is. His problem is fundamentally the same Republicans have been facing for a long time: they need to balance exciting the base and turning off everyone else. If Trump were to shut up for a while, that would soften the negative opinions of people who dislike him primarily for his style, but it would also weaken his support from people who like him for the same reason.
This is the basic dilemma the Republicans have been facing for a while. They depend on an energized base to win turnout based elections, but the things Trump likes to do to energize the Republican base also rile up the Democratic base and turn off some swing voters who don’t like his style.
This is why Republicans have focused for so long on coming up with wedge issues. The whole point is to exploit weaknesses in the Democratic coalition by focusing on issues that the Republican base has been brought to see as critical while exploiting divisions within the Democratic base. It lets them energize their base without energizing the Democratic base to the same extent.
Trump has two problems in doing this kind of thing. One is simply that his particular issues are not ones that focus on disagreements within the Democratic coalition. More generally, though, the Democrats have been doing a better job of coalition building than they used to do and gotten various sub-groups to accept each others’ pet issues in a way that makes the party generally less vulnerable to wedge issues. We haven’t been as successful as the Republicans yet, but we’re in a better place in regard to wedge issues than we were in the age of W.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
What a load of hose shit. And projection at its finest. Using a vaccine as economic and diplomatic leverage is exactly what Trump would do.
Shit, Trump might even have Young Jared declare that the vaccine was only for the federal government and refuse to give it to the states.
Also, this weird, co-ordinated shitting on the Chinese may have nasty unintended consequences. And yet Trump is ramping up false accusations with increasing rapidity. So, in just a few days, we have:
China created the virus in their government labs.
China lied about the extent of the pandemic early on so that they could hoard PPE
China is quickly trying to develop a vaccine so that they can control who gets it
But don’t worry, Trump will come to the rescue.
This shit is too Orwellian even for Orwell.
Forget that Trump early on praised China and bragged about sending them supplies. We have always been at war with China.
Ignorance is Strength.
Elizabelle
Awaiting Cuomo O’Clock. Any minute now.
http://www.ny.gov
with soothing new age music
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Are they, though? Trump’s polls numbers have really bounced back. I just don’t feel like we can afford to tell ourselves too many happy stories about where the electorate is at. For some reason, a lot of people don’t understand he is a conman.
catclub
Next thing you’ll be saying the Iraq invasion (#2) was a mistake.
satby
@The Moar You Know: A hardcore chunk of his base are already pledging not to get any vaccine because “Bill Gates, Deepstate plot, secret microchipping, arglebargle”.
rp
That’s exactly right. Because it’s something an idiot would do. China, OTOH, knows that they’re much better off if the world recovers from the virus and buys lots of goods from them. Only a dumbass like Trump who doesn’t understand trade and economics thinks that the US would be better off if we’re healthy and everyone else is sick.
Mike in NC
Yeah, not buying that at all. Zero empathy or compassion in that sociopath.
Elizabelle
Cuomo up. From Rochester. Here’s the C-Span link for today.
schrodingers_cat
@MisterForkbeard: Not for nothing do I call MAGA Haberman the mouth of Sauron.
JPL
@CindyH: Little shop of horrors. feed me, feed me
Just Chuck
@satby: Sounds like a self-correcting problem.
Ella in New Mexico
@germy: UHG!!
I so fucking hate it when people use medical terms when they don’t have a clue about what they mean.
Aphasia is a condition that is the result of some type of injury to or disease of the brain which results in a loss of ability to produce language. Stuttering is NOT aphasia.
Joe Biden does not have dementia. When someone, even someone who likes the guy, throws around terms like that one they’re contributing to the narrative that Trump’s team is using.
Brachiator
@satby:
This is what we’ve come to. Trump loyalists would gulp down malaria pills and inject disinfectant if he told them to. But they would reject a life-saving vaccine if it came from Bill Gates or a Democrat.
Just Chuck
@schrodingers_cat: “Grima Haberman” has a ring to it.
Elizabelle
@Mike in NC: Trump was undoubtedly “apprehensive.” His re-election chances. It’s all about Trump. You’re right about the no compassion or empathy for anyone but Trump.
Americans being sick, dead or without jobs? Losers.
catclub
The NYT report on excess deaths relative to previous years. All those excess deaths are not presently assigned to covid 19, maybe half of them are, so far.
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Hi, nothing particular to add here except to say that I’ve really been enjoying your recent long-form responses and I think they’ve been right on, this one no exception.
mrmoshpotato
@Mai naem mobile: @CindyH: Turtle-faced Fascist Motherfucker doesn’t care about anything but packing the courts with prepubescent RWNJs that’ll make the judiciary a crapshoot for the next 50 years.
Fuck Moscow Mitch.
schrodingers_cat
@catclub: With all the openings, the rate of deaths which is about 2000 deaths per day is going to increase.
mrmoshpotato
@catclub: Silly catclub. George W Bush is a wartime president. Why do you hate the troops?
patrick II
@Brachiator:
Whatever happens, if the U.S. develops a vaccine first, private investors, including Trump, will make a huge profit.
trollhattan
@rp:
It’s why Trump loves him some Blagojevich, despite his being a Dem. “I’ve got got this thing, and it’s fucking golden. I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing” probably gave Trump a stiffie when he first heard it. He may have set up a little shrine to Gov Rob and decided being elected might have its benefits, after all.
WereBear
There’s going to be abundant — and contradictory — conspiracy theories coming out of the Republicans as they desperately seek one that will stick.
Ruckus
I’ll keep saying this. shit for brains doesn’t not care about science, he can’t care about it because he can’t understand it in the least. Not at any level, not college level, not HS level, not 4th grade level. He deals in what he can understand best, if not deal with in any way reasonably, his own selfish interest. And he’s so good at that, he’s over the years bankrupted 6 times. Given enough money to last anyone 3 lifetimes of comfort, he’s built a lifetime of failure and a persona of bullshit. Most of that was during a lifetime of bigoted personality, which has deteriorated into a broken, diseased, dangerous, demented mind.
Baud
@WereBear:
“Hillary’s 30,000 missing emails contained the blueprint for the virus!”
Ksmiami
@ChrisS: We can remove them by force if required- this is an illegitimate government
Barbara
There are no limits to their magical thinking, driven by the idea that it is existentially impossible for them to fail at anything, clueless to the fairly stark evidence that if they have never failed it is because they have never been required to put anything at risk. Their “success” has been bought and paid for by others. In this, I really believe they don’t get it.
Miss Bianca
@Ruckus: Yeah, if only all that obvious failure had been a little more obvious to a large segment of the American population, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation!
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: You wanna mention George Ryan as well to make it a trifecta of shit? :)
hitchhiker
Recommend that article to everyone you know; it’s a succinct summary of what we’ve all been watching unfold, with details and quotes.
Then listen to Ezra Klein interviewing Pramila Jayapal on the Ezra Klein Show podcast, as a palate cleanser and to remind yourself that we really do have competent people in government, and they’re thinking around several corners at the same time.
Sooner or later, trump will be nothing but a very distasteful, distant memory … like the time you had a root canal, or cancer. While that day approaches, we have to be looking past it, or go fucking bananas.
Ruckus
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
It’s more that they like that he’s a con man. And that he’s conning democrats. They aren’t any more sane than trump is.
Doug R
@Roger Moore: Yeah, closing the White House <b>Pandemic Office</b> in 2018 was <b>his</b> decision whether he accepts responsibility or not.
He THREW his hand out and was happy with what he drew.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Ditto. It’s not as if Trump has anything to do with the development of a vaccine. Any praise for a vaccination should go to scientists and medical experts — a group which Trump and his ilk have spurned.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m never going to be able to leave my condo, am I?
Patricia Kayden
@Ruckus: I’m trying to figure out what exactly Trump understands best. Nothing except how to be a bully and bigot as far as I can see.
Sloane Ranger
@rp:
I don’t think that’s the plan. I think it’s more a case of I’ve got the vaccine, bow down and worship me, tell me how wonderful and greatly great I am if you want to get it.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
Possibly. If a vaccine were to be developed before November, or if Trump is re-elected.
But I am less concerned that a company might reap profits than I am that Trump will misdirect efforts and throw money at companies that produce nothing, or that Trump might hoard any vaccine and not get it distributed as widely as possible and as efficiently as possible.
Trump’s ignorance, incompetence and avarice is the greatest impediment to dealing with the pandemic.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
If only that segment of the population wasn’t so deluded that up is down, right is up and hate is wonderful, yes we’d not be in this mess. But they have swallowed bullshit because they think it tastes wonderful. They are the mobius strip of beliefs and ideals.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Not to mention Trump would have tried that stunt last week. There is no way the Leroy Jenkins of American politics could wait six months for anything.
So of course Trump forced his staff to lie about the data.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Oh Baud…
Jay Noble
Right now, I’ve resigned myself to pretty much not going anywhere other than the grocery stores, the gas station and the occasional take-out meal. Even if if there were an October surprise vaccine.
Being 3 or 4 of the vulnerable categories, I won’t feel safe until we see results of masss vaccinations. But I have a more personal reason. I could have very well been a Thalidomide Baby. No vaccine ready in October will have been tested enough and the promise of one that might arrive after the election – or not – is a nonstarter. Until there is properly vetted nonTrump affected FDA approval I’ll keep being a basement dwelling wraith.
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
Understands best?
That’s the sum total of what he can understand. Like a 4 yr old brat, he understands only what he thinks at any one moment is in his best interest. He is and always has been severely limited to that. It’s just that he’s also in a position that his personality and aging makes everything far, far worse.
Brachiator
@Sloane Ranger:
RE: Only a dumbass like Trump who doesn’t understand trade and economics thinks that the US would be better off if we’re healthy and everyone else is sick.
Yep. There is a video clip of Rudy G appearing on some news show, telling governors that all they have to do to get help is to be nice to the president and say good things about him
I would almost love it if a vaccine were to be developed after Trump has lost the election. He would not be able to capitalize on any praise he might receive.
Gvg
@Jeffro: most schools haven’t had a school nurse for well over a decade. They share nurses who visit on rotation. Disgusting cost cutting.
sdhays
@Miss Bianca: That quote is breathtaking in its absolute awfulness.
On the other hand, this is hilarious:
I mean, how stupid or high (or high AND stupid) do you have to be to believe you could pretend Dump did something with “calm”? He really does have the worst people working for him.
Elizabelle
Banner headline atop the FTF NY Times right now:
Opening for thee, protection for meee.
PS: article should not be behind paywall, since it’s ‘rona related.
At Cuomo press conference, his second in command just reminded that, unlike the coronavirus the flu has a vaccine.
Cuomo earlier said that nobody thinks the coronavirus is like the flu. [Except in the — literal — fever swamps of rightwingnuttia.] He was restricting his description to the sane, and Democrats, apparently.
MattF
One thing to bear in mind is how susceptible Trump is to con artists. He believed the hydroxychloroquine con, I suspect he got the bleach-is-good-for-you idea from a con– so, believing a vaccine con would be right up his alley. And his followers… believe all sorts of unlikely stories.
WaterGirl
Excerpt from Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly:
What Joe Biden Can Learn from the NFL Draft
So as I’m reading through that and I blurt out “No fucking white women!” and then I get to Sally Yates and my ears perk up. Still, I think no white woman as VP is the right move.
Other excerpts from the article:
Gvg
@ChrisS: I am not sure he can do anything else. If I were him I would have know Trumps election would lead to a lot of republican losses. His earlier attempts to manage Trump were failures and Trump double crossed republicans who went out on limbs for him by under cutting the party stories, usually within the same day. I notice their isn’t as much of that now.
this supposed great business man doesn’t know that if you always don’t keep your deals, after while no one bothers to cut a deal with you. I think both parties are just waiting for him to be gone.
so anyway, McConnel may just be fatalistic in only pursuing conservative judges….not that I want him to, just I can’t see anything else he can do,
mad citizen
@Jay Noble: This is the reality, yes. Many juicers posting variations on the themes of trump–incredibly stupid, con artist, timeline of a day, nothing more.
Random things: Remember the second half of trump’s 2020 physical? Internet told me on March 2 he said he’d probably get to it in the next 90 days, but was so busy he had not done it yet, yadda yadda. WH press should ask him a question about this.
Remember Nixon’s “secret plan to end the war” in 1967/68? It was just some BS he talked about to liberal/midwest newspaper editors “on background”. For some reason I was thinking about it the other day. Of course, an many note here, this type of strategery is way beyond trump.
Seems to me trump is just trying to get in front of, and brand, the vaccine train. It’s probably going to happen. The name “operation warp speed” is incredibly STUPID. I’m continually amazed the tv press can report these things with a straight face.
Was thinking last night about how bad could it get. What if 100 million americans were infected? How many deaths? 600K? Six million?
Ironic that in his inaugural address he declared an end to the American Carnage.
Elizabelle
@Gvg: I am going to hope that a lot of Republicans are out on self-quarantine for most of the rest of the year, so that Mitch cannot ram his 19th century judges through, taking advantage of a pandemic.
Brachiator
@Mai naem mobile:
UK prime minister Boris Johnson actually caught the virus and is still fumbling his countries efforts to fight the pandemic and lying to Parliament and the public about results.
It is alarming to see people who should know better fail so miserably and it seems, deliberately.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: The WaMonthly has an absolutely putrid welcoming popup ad up now. Noxious.
Cartoon of Trump. What if he wins again? Prepare yourself with a subscription …
Uh, no. Trump “wins” again, I am going to be watching every penny as I close down, preparing to emigrate. I do not want another microscopic inquiry of an upcoming Trump term. It is flight time if fight does not work.
I wish I could elect not to see that thing. Shame on you, WaMo.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I thought it was going to be about how he should televise it.
sdhays
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Probably not for 2 years. It’s pretty clear that the Federal government is not going to be doing much constructive until next January (which will be far too late), and we have enough states run by evil morons that there’s not going to be enough of a lull to even have a second wave (this is my current irritation – discussion of a “second wave” in “the fall” when it’s not clear – at all! – that the first wave is going to dissipate much and that we’re going to get a break in the summer).
Yes, things are getting better in NYC, but it’s still not good, and Georgia, Florida, Texas, and other Republican-led states are going to be seeding the rest of the country on an ongoing basis.
I don’t like to wish bad things, even on bad people, but leaders who recklessly deal with a pandemic because they completely disregard lives deserve to experience the disease themselves. It probably won’t teach them anything unless it kills them, which isn’t particularly useful as a teaching aid (I don’t think BoJo has learned anything from his brush with death), but at least they will be confronted by the actual consequences of their actions. And if it does kill them, maybe their successor will have learned something.
Brachiator
@MattF:
Trump certainly disproves the claim that “you can’t con a con man.”
Trump is susceptible to woo because his understanding of science is worse than that of a distracted elementary school kid. And for all his bluster about the quality of his brain, Trump lacks even rudimentary critical thinking skills, and is naturally attracted to simplistic solutions and all manner of conspiracy theories and woo.
He proves every day that he is singularly unfit to manage this crisis, or to be any kind of national leader.
And sadly, as I have noted before, Trump is exactly as stupid as his base. They form a natural mutual admiration society of the gullible and the stubbornly misinformed.
p.a.
These open-the-economy protesters are the same mooyuks of ‘the Constitution is not a suicide pact’ infamy. I guess the Constitution IS a license to kill though…
Poe Larity
Mike G
The guy who wrote a book called “Dow 36,000” in 1999 made an inaccurate prediction?
I’m shocked.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
And a good deal of this increase will be attributable to Trump’s desire to open up the country without adequate planning or the availability of testing and containment protocols.
Madness.
The Moar You Know
@Gvg: We live (and my wife teaches) in one of the wealthiest districts in the US and we have a district nurse who covers ten schools. Haven’t had actual school nurses since the late 1970s.
If you want to know where all that money went, BTW, it got moved to cover what used to be known as “special ed”, state mandated and no end in sight to how fast those costs are rising. End result: no nurses, but three psychologists in every school.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mad citizen:
Today is the 50th anniversary of Kent State. That was the single most radicalizing event of my life to that point. This feels like that. The govt doesn’t care if you die.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
It’s not just goodwill. A public health crisis is a public problem. Each country does better when their neighbors aren’t suffering from a pandemic. If nothing else, they’re not going to be buying as much when they’re being locked down. Not to mention the chance of the virus mutating to avoid the vaccine and coming back if we don’t stomp it out worldwide.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Wow, good way to express it in relation to Kent State. We too remember that as a real turning point but I hadn’t thought of it in relation to the present in quite that way.
Jeffro
@Gvg: um what? All of the schools I’ve ever worked in (1998-on; multiple states) have had a full-time school nurse for the building.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: Same here…if he cheats/supresses his way to a win in November, we’ll be working on emigrating to Canada or New Zealand.
Fortunately…he ain’t gonna win ;)
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I was still in high school, but Kent State and Jackson State sparked a lot of discussion.
To paraphrase Neil Young,
I hope that people, especially misguided Trump supporters, see that he does not care about them at all. Even their deaths are just an inconvenience.
The Moar You Know
@mad citizen: For the US, epidemiologists who aren’t working for the government will tell you what will happen absent a vaccine. Ten million plus. Not all this year, of course.
The million dollar question has still not been answered and desperately needs to be; does a COVID infection confer any sort of immunity or not? If the answer is yes, then your toll is far lower then ten million. If the answer is no, absent a cure or vaccine, the answer is “damn near everyone save for those few weird outliers who might have some sort of immunity through other means”, because nobody is going to survive multiple COVID infections.
dnfree
@Jeffro: Full-time school nurses are a thing of the past in many Illinois schools. In some cases they are replaced by family resource coordinators in districts with a fairly high poverty level.
LuciaMia
Lunch-Lady Doris would be doing a way better job than our current clown.
Elizabelle
Satire by Andy Borowitz:
Amir Khalid
@Sloane Ranger:
This is Trump we’re talking about. I don’t think there is a plan. He’s just making it all up on the fly.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: He could announce that a vaccine exists, his administration has exclusive use of it, and it will be distributed only to states whose electoral votes go to Trump.
James E Powell
@Patricia Kayden:
He knows how to manipulate the press/media, especially cable shows. He is better at this than anyone we have ever seen. He was made for them and they were made for him.
He also knows exactly how to act and speak to remain completely connected with and in control of his ~42%.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
If they did the right thing, or even understood what the right thing might be, they wouldn’t be where they are now. They were elected because they focused on what enough of the people wanted and they did that because they are exactly what the people who voted for them wanted them to be. That is against any kind of change that would cost those voters anything in the way of status and perceived power. The basic premise of conservatism is racism, conserving their status quo. The fact that the politician makes money off that desire is of no concern to those that hold conservative views. Because another part of that view is “I get mine, fuck everyone else.”
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: I know! That ad upsets me every time I see it. It’s such in your face fear mongering.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
At least now the government is not actively trying and succeeding in killing you.
OH WAIT. I think I spoke too soon and massively incorrectly……
schrodingers_cat
OT Does anyone have MotoG 7 Power or Samsung Galaxy A50? If you have either how do you like your phone. Thanks.
rikyrah
@feebog:
No. He did not draw a ‘ bad hand”??
Ella in New Mexico
@Miss Bianca: Awww, thank you! I realize that I really depend on BJ and folks like you to keep me sane every day during this pandemic.
I’ve probably got too much time on my hands lately–been waiting for the credentialing and insurance stuff to be completed to start in my NP job at UNM in June and thanks to our Gov’s COVID orders we had very few cases in ICU here (plus all the hospitals furloughed staff d/t reduced outpatient and elective procedures) so no PRN hours were available for me to pick up to help out for several weeks.
I guess in some ways, this time with nothing to do has been a blessing. Stay healthy and safe.
sdhays
@James E Powell: Does he “know” any of these things? I tend to think his success is pretty much incidental to other things: the utter rot in the Republican Party, the decades long propaganda war waged by right-wing billionaires (led by Rupert Murdoch), and the hollowing out of the corporate press which forces them to focus on cheap entertainment. Sure, he’s “entertaining” (I have never found him entertaining, but it seems to be true), but just like everything else in his life, other people are behind the scenes making sure that things that would destroy other people “just go away” for him.
ETA: He’s just so clearly unbelievably stupid, I can’t give him any credit for anything resembling a plan or strategy or even instinct. We know his range of abilities is incredibly limited; he didn’t do anything to create the conditions that made his limited and pathetic set of abilities successful.
Salty Sam
I was in high school at the time. I remember riding the city bus home from school the day that news came out, hanging out with the anti-war students in the back of the bus, talking about dead students. I clearly remember one guy looking up from the newspaper with a shocked look on his face, saying, “Holy shit! They are actually gunning US down now!”
I remember that as a turning point in my thinking…
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I’ve never heard anyone say that you can’t con a conman. The big trick behind a huge number of cons and scams is tricking the victim into thinking they are going to cheat someone else, often the con artist. Playing to the victim’s greed overcomes their skepticism, and making them complicit in a scam themselves makes them reluctant to report being cheated to the authorities. Those tricks don’t work on honest people.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Salty Sam: Exactly.
Roger Moore
@Poe Larity:
There are days when I’m proud of my hometown. Today is not one of them.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Thing is, there are people who understand that there is a difference between perceived power and actual power, and they know how to exploit the difference.
We are way beyond this. Trump is not a Republican and he is not even a conservative. He has no values and cares for nothing except his own aggrandizement. Most of his plutocrat buddies are as bad as he is. Conservative ideology often converges with their own interests, but in the end they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about conservative values if it gets in the way of profit.
America has often been a profoundly racist country. It has also fought its racist instincts. But racists drift towards whoever will give them what they want. Since the 60s, the GOP has decided to fully embrace racists. And, beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party began to firmly repudiate racism. But it is a long, ongoing struggle.
The people who voted for Trump thought that he would take care of them. As has been righteously quoted, they firmly believed that he would hurt the right people.
But now it is clearly out in the open that Trump’s motto is “I got mine, fuck you all.”
There is a guy in a MAGA hat dealing with the reality that Trump doesn’t care whether the guy dies, or whether the guy’s father dies, or whether the guy’s grandmother dies from the pandemic.
These fools are screaming to open up the economy, to get back to work. And Trump is openly backing the plutocrats who say, “yes, this is what we want. BTW, we want a law that says that you can’t sue us if you come back to work and catch that ‘Rona. Have a nice day.”
It’s hard for a MAGA idiot to argue for the beauty of the status quo from the grave.
Soprano2
Re: the tweet about China and the vaccine, it seems that everyone has forgotten that article from March about Trump literally trying to buy a company in Germany to develop a vaccine exclusively for the U.S.!!! He already tried to do that!
Betty Cracker
@sdhays: I agree with you. Trump is one of the stupidest people alive. Every time I’m tempted to attribute powers of strategy and manipulation to him personally to explain his rise, I’ve only to listen to him talk for two minutes to be disabused of those notions.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Indeed. We were the ones that were cheated.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: But a more evil and capable R is taking notes. The next iteration will be more competent.
Brachiator
OT: A story to keep an eye on:
Bray seems to be greatly respected in the tech industry.
sdhays
I really disagree with this. Republicans and conservatives have embraced him. Saying he’s not a Republican or a conservative let’s these people off the hook.
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: You know, if things flame out for me up here, seriously considering a move to NM. If I have to end up looking for a job in a metro area, Santa Fe and Albuquerque appeal to me a lot more than Denver or Pueblo or Colorado Springs.
sdhays
@Brachiator: Wow. That’s kind of gutsy.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Agreed, and that’s one reason we’ve got to work our asses off to make sure Dems rack up huge wins up and down the ticket. IMO, if we boot Trump but fail to make fundamental changes because Republicans in Congress retain sufficient power to stifle reform, we are doubly screwed in 2024 when a monster like Tom Cotton harnesses the power of stupid Americans.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: Trump certainly disproves the claim that “you can’t con a con man.”
I don’t know. The adage has been around for quite a while. Even Frank Abagnale, of “Catch Me If You Can Fame,” referred to it.
But I agree with you that reality is more complicated.
Sure they do. Honest people can be greedy or desperate, or lonely. One of the most successful types of fraud is affinity fraud. “I got this great deal just for you. You can trust me because I love you, we belong to the same club, we are the same religion,” etc.
And the best con artists, like Trump, can even get their suckers to defend them.
Patricia Kayden
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
The guy who used to work on The Apprentice and talks about Trump’s addiction in his standup act says that Ivanka and Jared are planning world domination.
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My back-of-the-envelope math says that’s at least another 75,000 people dead from this thing.
The total number of people that die from this is going to double over the next months. And that’s WITHOUT large economic ‘openings’ pushed by Trump.
Brachiator
@sdhays:
RE: Trump is not a Republican and he is not even a conservative.
Check the record. Trump has claimed to be a Democrat and an Independent over the years.
It doesn’t take the Republicans off the hook in any way. They originally claimed to be skeptical of Trump, but then embraced him and can’t let go. And hypocritical evangelicals tie themselves into knots by acknowledging Trump’s manifest immorality (by their supposed standards), but excusing it by saying that somehow God chose him to deliver America from evil ways.
And mainstream conservatives reveal themselves to be hypocrites who don’t believe in much of anything but maintaining political power. “We believe in a balanced budget, but don’t care that Trump’s tax cuts will result in massive deficits. We will make up for it by slashing Social Security.”
Jay
Subsole
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
Worse. Those folks had sense enough to act ashamed when the tide turned.
@Brachiator: They can resonate at however many Hz they want. Gravity, like coronavirii, does not negotiate.
...now I try to be amused
@Roger Moore:
I think a key part of the GOP bloc’s cohesion is that they vote against Democrats at least as much as they vote for Republicans. Opposition to Trump is keeping Dems together so far, but I fear we won’t do as well as Republicans in future elections until the attitude of “Vote blue no matter who” (or “Vote against red until they’re dead”) is more general.
To use Rachel Bitecofer’s terminology, we need to close the negative partisanship gap in the long term.
Subsole
@Jay:
It’s not even doublethink anymore.
It’s just duckspeak. Whatever random noise falls down their brain-chute and out of their slack little mouths at that moment.
JaneE
@sdhays: The people who style themselves Republicans and conservatives today are very different from the Republicans and conservatives around when I started voting. Back then they threw the JBS out of the party as too extreme. In the GOP today they would be closer to the left side of the party. IMO Eisenhower was the last Republican, more in a small r sense, not a partisan one. The party has been marching steadily right ever since.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: I don’t think Jared and Ivanka could successfully plan the takeover of a roadside produce stand. They’re as dumb as Trump, but they might be useful puppets to an evil mastermind. In fact, there’s every reason to believe they already are.
catclub
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The point in this that somehow
doesn’t get 72 point headlines, is over 200,000 deaths by the end of June in the US, and the curves not really coming down then., so another 200,000 deaths by the end of August.
I want that ad from a month ago when it had Trump jabbering about a single person with CV19 to run again, nonstop.
Central Planning
@The Moar You Know:
That, and the administrators for all that. If there can be one nurse per 10 buildings, why can’t there be one business admin for every 10 buildings (or more! It’s not like buying toilet paper takes up that much time).
Cheryl from Maryland
@Mai naem mobile: THIS. My 96 soon to be 97-year-old mother-in-law talks about how unprecedented the current situation is until I remind her that her childhood was overshadowed by polio. Then the stories come out about lockdowns on swimming, play areas, childhood pastimes, being sent to the farm away from the city, then the reverse, etc., etc. And then the tuberculosis stories come out about neighboring families disappearing to go to the sanitorium. Humanity in the West has had a good run of about 60 years with no serious diseases stalking our lives. We have forgotten.
terry chay
@James E Powell: That 42 percent was 25 percent in October 2008. You will be similarly surprised when it comes crashing down in the Summer of 2020.
The floor has been held up by the economy. On the era of polarization, people may not change their opinion but they certainly change their enthusiasm.
terry chay
@Betty Cracker: remember Trump’s Razor during 2016?
terry chay
@Brachiator: not the Tech Industry but he is big in the open source world which underpins a lot of tech.
I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, but I don’t question his heart. He is one of the good guys.
Didnt realize they made him a VP of Amazon. I guess that sinecure didn’t work out. I suppose he’ll be at Google soon.
J R in WV
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Hey, are you any kin to Sister Rail Gun? Just asking, nyms seemed similar…
;-)
Ella in New Mexico
@Miss Bianca: We’d be lucky to have you!
Steve Finlay
I was not sure about posting this, but I had better do it before real life beats me to it.
It won’t be long before one of the well-known wingnut extremists tells us that the USA’s higher death rate and case numbers prove that the USA responded to COVID much more successfully, wisely and effectively than other countries. We will be told that by killing off more people faster, the USA has rescued its economy faster, gotten rid of more unproductive “charges on the public purse” sooner, and made much better use of its resources than all those other countries (including mine) that pissed away their energy and money doing socialist stuff like saving lives.
Why not have a betting pool on who will say this first, and in which month? My money is on Bill O’Reilly in June, although I am not counting Sean Hannity out by any means.
Procopius
@Jeffro: Many schools in Kansas do without a nurse, thanks to Governer Brownbeck. None of them do without a principal. The same is true in some other Red States, where public schools are targeted for budget cuts and charter schools (profit to the owners) are encouraged. How many schools in Louisiana are without a nurse, or have a nurse one or two days a week?