Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair
https://link.vanityfair.com/view/5bd67c363f92a41245df49ebc0e54.tmz/4e6714c1
Bess writes in The HIIVE for Vanity Fair:
Earlier this week a devastating statistic emerged from the coronavirus crisis: in a matter of months, more Americans have died from the virus than in the Vietnam War. While the Trump administration certainly did not cause the pandemic, it is fairly widely accepted—outside of the West Wing—that its shambolic response to COVID-19—from ignoring the early, dire warnings, to declaring them fake news, to putting a dog breeder in charge of the Health and Human Services task force, to listening to literally anything the first son-in-law had to say on the matter— allowed the deadly disease to gain a foothold in the United States, where, to date, more than one million people have tested positive and more than 58,000 have died.
Most people, regardless of their political allegiance, would probably agree that almost 60,000 dead Americans constitutes a lot. Particularly in light of the fact that in February, Donald Trump claimed that no more than 15 Americans would even test positive for the disease. And then you have Jared Kushner.
Appearing on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, the Boy Prince of New Jersey was asked about “two questions [that kept] coming up over the weekend on the Sunday shows,” the first one being, “Where’s the national strategy?” and the second, “Why did you guys collapse the pandemic office when you guys took over?” Claiming that the pandemic office “was an NSC situation,” and anyway, “there’s a lot of different parts of the government that are responsible for that and all those have been functioning”—fact check: not so much—the sentient jar of cold cream then boldly proclaimed: “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this and I think that we’ve achieved all of the different milestones that are needed, so the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s what really needs to be told.”
“We’ve done more tests than any other country in the world, so we’ve gotta be doing a lot of things right” — Jared Kushner (the ability to test people when the virus was silently spreading across the country in February and March would’ve been nice … )
Jared Kushner, as the US coronavirus death toll surpasses the Vietnam War and approaches 60,000: “This is a great success story, and I think that’s really what needs to be told.”
740 people are talking about this
To be fair to Kushner, who reportedly maintained as of mid-March that the coronavirus situation was “more about public psychology than a health reality,” after a lifetime of failing upward one might actually think this was true! If you had only ever fucked up at every job you ever held, only to be rewarded with more responsibility, you, too, might observe a five-figure body count and say to yourself, “Not bad, J-man, not bad at all.” Of course, it’s actually very bad and Jared, his equally unhelpful wife, and his criminally negligent father-in-law should all be run out of town for it, but you can see where he might’ve gotten that idea that he really nailed this one.
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Get more from Bess & “The HIVE” @ Vanity Fair @ the above link.
Let’s see, we’re the 3rd most populous country in the world; but we’re the the “league leader” in deaths. And, the two countries ahead of us in population, China and India, are ahead by multiples: 4x. Yet, China and India between them have reported fewer than 10,000 deaths.
Yes, there’s good reason to be skeptical of both China’s and India’s reporting. That’s also true to some extent of the U.S. But, even if we doubled the numbers from India & China, while accepting the U.S. statistics as accurate, we still would have approximately 400% more deaths than both of those countries combined.
Of course Trump, Kushner, and their cronies have made a career out of falsifying and fabricating numbers and misconstruing statistics to claim endless successes and “business genius.” But, this time, there’s no getting around the numbers. And with states being encouraged to “open up” right and left despite universal non-compliance with even “step 1” of the Administration’s own “guidance,” (a 14-consecutive-day decrease in new cases) we’re nowhere near the end of the dying. ☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️
Obviously, Trump, Jared, Pence, Moscow Mitch, and a bunch of other science-denying right wingnuts think it’s a good and noble thing for YOU (not them) to join poor meat industry workers, first responders, and nursing home residents in laying down their lives so that they can keep on grifting, grafting, and running the country off a cliff.
Just hope you’re not the next to go “under the bus.” ⚰️🚌
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
PWS
04-30-20