Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been ordered by the Trump regime to clam up about any further developments as to the spread of the virus or the regime’s response to it without first getting his comments approved by the Trump regime. This directive comes just one day following a White House news conference about the rapidly spreading worldwide coronavirus infection.
During that presser, Trump repeatedly patted himself and his regime on their collective back as he effused about the “tremendous success” that he and his people were having in dealing with this spreading outbreak.
But to Trump’s obvious chagrin, at the very same conference, Dr. Fauci offered a decidedly less optimistic and more realistic view of the situation:
When it was focused only on China, we had a period of time, temporary, said the good doctor, that we could do a travel restriction that prevented cases from coming into the U.S. When you have multiple countries involved, it’s very difficult to do. In fact, it’s almost impossible.
And now, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that his state is “monitoring” at least 8,400 people for possible coronavirus infection. It has only been a matter of days since California recorded the first known non-foreign-travel-related case of the disease in an American. This means that the virus is now considered as “community transmissible” or “domestically” passed spread without needing previously infected “foreign” vectors.
Dr. Fauci told CNN last week that, “…we are clearly at the brink” of a pandemic.
In the meantime, the stock market has nosedived for the third consecutive day, signaling a potentially significant economic downturn in response to the flood of bad news relative to this virus. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control has validated Dr. Fauci’s prediction that the virus will definitely spread in the U.S., Trump’s rosy prognostications to the contrary notwithstanding.
Trump’s message has been anything but consistent. He has bounced back-and-forth between trying to calm fears about the virus to then in the very next breath blaming the whole thing on Democrats.
Again, he declared that his regime has performed “beyond what many people would’ve thought.” But because of “Democrat” [sic]fear-mongering during the recent presidential debate, the stock market has suffered.
So sayeth Donald Trump:
I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democrat [sic] candidates standing on that stage, making fools out of themselves, and they say, “If we ever have a president like this.” When they look at the statements made by the people standing behind those podiums, I think it has a huge effect.
Trump also responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charge that his regime’s efforts to even address the virus were “too little and too late,” and indeed “meager” and “anemic” to boot.
“I think Speaker Pelosi is incompetent. I think she’s not thinking about the country,” Trump said. He actually accused the Speaker of the House of Representatives of deliberately “trying to create a panic” over the spread of this disease.
“I hope that it’s going to be a very little problem, but we have to work together. Instead she wants to do the same thing with ‘Crying’ Chuck Schumer,” he said.
And, to the shock and surprise of absolutely no one, Trump did not spare the news media in his condemnations. After the press conference, he tweeted that the media was deliberately “hostile,” as usual, toward him; and that their sole purpose in covering this crisis was to make him look bad by exaggerating the threat.
Refusing to be deterred (or to shut up), Pelosi later doubled down in her critique of Trump and his regime’s response to this growing crisis, saying that the Trump regime had,
…mounted an opaque and chaotic response to this outbreak. The Trump Administration has left critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant.
The Trump Budget called for slashing almost $700 million from the Centers for Disease Control, she continued. And even now, the Administration continues to devalue Americans’ health security by ransacking funding from other vital public health needs.
(Here, Pelosi refers to Trump’s flat refusal to agree to any funding for relieving fears through education about or conducting research into the coronavirus outbreak unless and until the Democratic House of Representatives agree to cut an equal or greater amount of money from winter heating programs currently set aside specifically for poor people).
She also addressed Trump’s charge that the stock market was crashing because of the Democrats’ admittedly rather raucous debate in South Carolina:
You really have to wonder, said Pelosi. He said the reason the market dropped was because of the debate the other night. Well, the market had dropped 1,800 points before the debate the other night. Let’s not be silly about what this is.
Opinion:
This is classic Trump-speak, to which we have all grown depressingly accustomed. It amounts to the following: an undifferentiated hodgepodge of hyperbole, ignorance, and score-settling. To wit:
- The Big Lie. Trump has perfected Joseph Goebbels’ chief propaganda tool of “The Big Lie” into an art form. That is, tell a big enough lie long enough, loud enough, and often enough — until the truth is simply lost in the preposterous-ness and absurdity of the lie itself. (One eventually finds oneself asking oneself: “Who would say such a ridiculous thing if it were not true?”). “Truth” is unceremoniously drowned in a deep, deep sea of repetitive, incessant, outrageous, even fantastic, falsehoods. Here, for example, the Trump regime’s response to this crisis has been to declare it a “tremendous,” unequaled, unmatched, unparalleled, and unmitigated “success!” Or, how about my personal favorite: “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.”
- Projection. Trump engages in what thousands of head doctors are now publicly calling blatant, obvious, in-your-face “projection.” In this current case of a possible pandemic sickening, even wiping out unknown numbers of American citizens, Trump re-directs and reverses his own obvious character/personal defects and shortcomings and “projects” them back at and onto his perceived enemies, i.e., “Nancy Pelosi is incompetent.”
- Deflection/Distraction (Or, follow the red herring). The stock market slide was solely and completely caused by the Democratic presidential candidates bickering during the most recent debate.
- The Blame Game. In one disjointed but yet run-on sentence, Trump criticized and denigrated the Federal Reserve, President Obama, news media, and specifically The New York Times for “weaponizing” this virus. (Actually, he lifted this last bit of verbiage from Medal of Freedom honoree, Rush Limbaugh).
In short, anything “bad” (in Trump-speak) that might be happening or may happen in the future bears no relation whatever to or any reflection upon anything that he or his regime has done or might do. By Donald Trump’s lights, anything — everything — “bad” is always somebody else’s fault because his efforts are always “perfect.”
However, the constant display of this man’s flaming narcissism and pure, unadulterated solipsism may finally be reaching a tipping point. People may begin to die because of this man’s inability to grasp, apprehend or understand anything beyond his own personal and selfish id. Nancy Pelosi put it even more succinctly:
“Peoples’ lives are at stake.”
No matter how hard they try, even his most ardent supporters can no longer not see what everyone else is seeing. And that is that no matter what the issue is or how deep the crisis, what matters most — and usually only — to Trump is how those developments affect him personally. That is why he seizes credit or casts blame whenever he thinks or believes that to do so will make him “look good” personally. That is why during this news conference he talked more about himself and the effect the virus was having on his regime and his persona than he did about how it may impact the American public.
Even his most ardent supporters recognize that he is congenitally unable to admit a mistake. They have watched him refuse to believe that Hurricane Maria killed more than a few people in Puerto Rico, for example. And, thus to this day, he has denied that beleaguered and desperate American island the help it needs.
They have watched him insist that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama despite his own weather service’s denial. Yet he went so far as to physically alter a weather map so that it would conform to his mistaken belief.
And the list goes on and on and on.
The coronavirus outbreak has featured more of the same self-centered, self-serving behavior and self-aggrandizing blandishments.
The difference this time, however, is, as Pelosi says, peoples’ lives are at risk. Conservative, White, American Peoples’ Lives. Right along with Democrats and liberals.
But, unfortunately for Trump and company, this virus does not read tweets or watch Fox news.