Clown in Chief
Greg Sargent writes in the WashPost:
President Trump is spinning his new decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization as an act of decisive leadership — one that showcases his devotion to effective crisis management, to gathering good empirical information, and to holding people accountable for leadership failures that had catastrophic human consequences.
In just about every conceivable way, this is the opposite of the truth.
In making this new move, Trump is inviting us to review the basic timeline of events. And it demonstrates that the WHO, for all its initial failures, was still far ahead of Trump in embracing the need for a comprehensive response to coronavirus.
The timeline also once again illustrates Trump’s epic failures in that regard, and reveals the degree to which Trump is now relying on transparently ridiculous scapegoating to erase his own central role in this catastrophe.
[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
In announcing an end to funding for the WHO, Trump claimed the organization was complicit in China’s early coverup of the outbreak’s severity there. He insisted the WHO “pushed China’s misinformation,” and ripped WHO for “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread.”
Trump also claimed that if not for WHO, “the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death.” He lamented that the U.S. can’t rely on WHO for “accurate, timely and independent information to make important public health recommendations and decisions.”
For Trump to position himself in this manner as a spokesperson for crisis management, empiricism and accountability would be positively comical, if the stakes weren’t so monumentally dangerous.
The WHO’s initial mistakes were real, and many critics beyond Trump have pointed to them. The organization was too trusting of China’s early obfuscations about coronavirus, and failed to aggressively push China to be more transparent. The WHO also arguably was too slow to declare a global public health emergency.
But cutting off funding as a punishment is counterproductive and deeply absurd. Indeed, even if you accept that the WHO committed serious errors, the timeline is still far more damning to Trump, by the terms that he himself has set through his criticism of the organization.
The timeline is far more damning to Trump
By Jan. 23, the WHO was already warning that coronavirus could “appear in any country,” and urged all countries to be “prepared for containment” and get ready to exercise “isolation” and “prevention” measures against its spread.
At around the same time, on Jan. 22, Trump was asked point-blank whether he worried about coronavirus’s spread, and he answered: “No, not at all,” insisting it was just “one person coming from China” and that “we have it totally under control.”
And on Jan. 24, Trump hailed China’s “effort” against coronavirus and its “transparency” about it, predicting that “it will all work out well.”
So Trump showed less concern about its spread in countries outside China — including in our own — than the WHO did.
On Jan. 30, the WHO declared coronavirus a global public health emergency. While WHO was still too credulous toward China’s response, WHO also warned that all countries must review “preparedness plans” and take seriously what was coming.
By contrast, on Jan. 30, Trump was directly warned by his Health and Human Services secretary of the threat coronavirus posed. Trump dismissed this as “alarmist.”
And on Feb. 2, Trump boasted to Sean Hannity: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” He hailed our “tremendous relationship” with that country. Trump continued praising China’s handling of coronavirus all through the entire month of February.
So at the very least, Trump showed precisely the same credulity about China that Trump is now faulting the WHO for showing, but without appreciating the urgency of the international threat coronavirus posed to the degree that the WHO did.
As MSNBC’s Ari Melber aptly put it, these attacks on the WHO are “only calling attention to the fact that the WHO was ahead of President Trump.”
. . . .
Trump is attacking the WHO right now so we’ll talk about the WHO’s shortcomings, and not his own role in this catastrophe. But this blame-shifting utter nonsense, and no one should grant it the slightest shred of credibility.
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Opinion Writer
Washington Post
At the link, read Greg’s complete article which also dismembers Trump’s bogus claim that his “Chinese travel ban” had a major impact on deterring the spread of the pandemic.
So, here’s what really appears to be happening as America’s national government disintegrates under Trump’s malicious incompetence. America is breaking up into a number of “Regional Federated States” which have banded together for mutual assistance under decisive governors, largely, but not exclusively Democrats. We already have one on the West Coast and one in the Northeast. I’d look for the governors of Virginia and Maryland and the Mayor of DC to perhaps form a “DMV Region” to manage the pandemic and the recovery.
That covers about 1/3 of the U.S. population and much of the economic and tax base. The rest of the states will have to limp along as best they can with governors largely in charge and trying to get as much help as they can from the sinking Federal ship by going around Trump and dealing with Pence, Fauci, and Birx. Everyone also counts on some help from the Fed, which isn’t immune from Trump’s blustering nonsensical attacks, but is largely beyond his control and therefore free of his blundering ineptness.
There’s likely to be very bad news for the health and safety of those in states whose GOP governors have proved to be as inept and willfully blind as Trump and the rest of his kakistocracy. South Dakota is a prime example of what happens under a clueless GOP Governor.
Notably, most of the initial victims in South Dakota were Latinos working in the supposedly “essential” meat packing industry under conditions that clearly violated best health practices. The Governor claims that the plant would have remained open even under a “Stay at Home” order. Now, however, workers are sick and all those plants are closed anyway. The worst possible result. So, we’ll see how “essential” they really were. Perhaps if everybody had stayed home, the disease wouldn’t have spread and the plants could have reopened on a more limited basis with proper social distancing and protective equipment. And, if workers are really “essential,” why aren’t we looking out for their health, safety, and income protection?
Internationally, world leaders have long ago learned that Trump is incapable of leadership and that under him the U.S. is no longer a trustworthy or reliable partner. Nothing in Trump’s inept handling of the Pandemic in the U.S., his pathetic attempts to shift the blame elsewhere, and his incredibly stupid decision to stop funding the WHO would convince them otherwise.
Sure, like the drunken bully/oaf in the bar, the “Trumped-up U.S.” throws its weight around in unpredictable ways and is too big to be ignored or easily removed from the premises. So, world leaders have figured out how to move on without the U.S. and hope to largely avoid the irrational acts of petty vengeance and retribution for which he is famous.
Not a pretty picture. But, it will be even worse if we don’t remove Trump and the GOP from power in November.
Dana Milbank had a “spot on” assessment of “Captain Clown” 🤡 in today’s Post:
. . . .
Like Bligh, he is abusive. Unlike Bligh, he is a poor navigator. The Trump-as-errant-captain theme has been explored, delightfully, by novelist Dave Eggers in his recent allegory, “The Captain and the Glory”:
“He nudged the wheel a bit left, and the entire ship listed leftward, which was both frightening and thrilling. He turned the wheel to the right, and the totality of the ship, and its uncountable passengers and their possessions, all were sent rightward. In the cafeteria, where the passengers were eating lunch, a thousand plates and glasses shattered. An elderly man was thrown from his chair, struck his head on the dessert cart and died later that night. High above, the Captain was elated by the riveting drama caused by the surprises of his steering.”
So it is with our captain, who claims absolute authority but takes no responsibility. He announces he’s cutting off funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of the pandemic. He condemns the WHO for praising China’s transparency, even though he said in January he “greatly appreciates [China’s] efforts and transparency.” His conflicting messages about reopening the economy throw the country into confusion. He assembles so many coronavirus task forces that he will need another to keep track of them all. And after his long delayed and botched virus response, even now the number of tests in U.S. commercial labs is falling.
At Wednesday evening’s session, Trump turned the tiller randomly. After proclaiming the United States has “passed the peak” of the virus, he swerved into complaints about “partisan obstruction” holding up his nominees and threatened the never-before-tested “constitutional authority to adjourn both houses of Congress,” which would provoke another crisis in the middle of the pandemic.
He veered into complaints about the “disgusting”Voice of Americaand the “impeachment hoax.”He lurched into attacks on the World Trade Organization , various Democrats and governors generally, asserting that “we have the right to do whatever we want.”He accused the WHO of a conspiracy to hide the virusand boasted about his name going on government-issued relief checks: “People will be very happy to get a big fat beautiful check, and my name is on it.”
The ship has become accustomed to such unpredictable steering: He touts a virus treatment that so far shows more alarming side effects than efficacy. He announces virus-testing schemes that don’t exist. He talks about pardoning Joe Exotic. He blames everybody except his own administration, which is doing things very, very strongly and powerfully. “The Defense Production Act was used very powerfully, more powerfully than anybody would know, in fact, so powerfully that, for the most part, we didn’t have to officially take it out,” he proclaims.
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As the captain propounds powerful gibberish, the mutiny builds. Regional blocs make their own pandemic-recovery plans. Allies condemn his assault on the WHO. Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) tells Politico that Trump has been “very uneven.” Even Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page offer some criticism.
“WSJ is Fake News!” shouts the captain.
“What the hell is happening to @FoxNews?”
What’s happening, captain, is you’ve hit the rocks.
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Opinion Columnist
Washington Post
Read Dana’s full op-ed here:
End the Clown Show! 🤡🤡 This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
PWS
04-17-20