As U.S. deaths from COVID-19 approached 300,000 people, the Department of Homeland Security held an indoor holiday party last week,The Washington Post reports. In one photo that made the rounds on Twitter, unlawfully appointed acting Sec. Chad Wolf posed with two smiling attendees, all of them unmasked.
“Wolf, who frequently appears on social media without a mask, did not publicize the party,” The Post reported. Reached for comment about a department that supposedly protects the “homeland” holding an indoors party in the middle of a fucking pandemic, Unlawful Chad’s spokesperson Chase Jennings claimed it was just your standard “meeting … with political staff.” Yeah, about that.
Here’s what the smiling attendee who tweeted the photo called this supposed meeting. “On the stage tonight at the DHS Holiday Party with @DHS_Wolf and Chief Information Officer (CIO) Karen Evans,” tweeted DHS chief financial officer Troy Edgar. He actually notes that he’s “confirmed” in his Twitter bio, inadvertently showing just how rare that is in the Trump administration. “I’m so grateful to serve with the 250K dedicated employees of Homeland Security,” he continued. “Merry Christmas!!”
Merry Christmas. But even worse, because that’s always the case under this administration, the superspreader event comes as Unlawful Chad is set to travel to Central America, “despite covid-related safety concerns and the fact that he is weeks away from being out of the job,” The Post notes. As if DHS hasn’t already done enough damage helping spread the virus both here at home and internationally.
“Even as lockdowns and other measures have been taken around the world to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, ICE has continued to detain people, move them from state to state and deport them,” The New York Times and Marshall Project reported earlier this year. Their investigation “tracked over 200 deportation flights carrying migrants, some of them ill with coronavirus, to other countries from March through June.”
But this administration doesn’t care about its own loyalists, so why should it care about immigrants in detention?
“Because nothing matters, ex-House Republican Mike Pompeo's State Department hosted a 200-person party in Washington last Tuesday night,” Daily Kos’ Hunter wrote last week. Just a couple days before that Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner wrote the White House held a holiday event, “with hundreds of attendees, people bringing in their families, and plenty of maskless faces.” At yet another White House holiday party a few days before that, even more maskless people.
At that event, “[t]he President addressed guests from the White House's grand staircase,” CNN reported. “Though several people were wearing masks, many were not and some were audibly coughing.” I mean truly wtf.
And just why is Unlawful Chad traveling to Central America? The Post reports he plans to meet with Panama’s minister of public safety to discuss “ongoing and future areas of cooperation,” even though he’ll no longer have anything to do with that on behalf of the federal government come January. Unlawful Chad could make like acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tony Pham and announce his resignation, but there really is a concerted effort to create a mountain of issues for President-elect Joe Biden to address.