The headline news from Donald Trump’s Sunday press briefing was that he’s dropping his push to kill us all by “reopening the country” on Easter and instead is extending social distancing measures until April 30. But as usual, the official news headline covered up much of what Trump said and did, because the media cannot handle how dangerous this man is.
Trump suddenly couldn’t stop talking about the possibility of 2 million deaths if the U.S. doesn’t effectively slow the spread of the virus, which was a big turnaround. He literally mentioned it 16 times during the briefing—sometimes to frame a possible 100,000 or so deaths as a potential big win rather than possibly the best we can do after he wasted more than a month before starting any kind of serious response to the threat.
Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx were on hand to praise Trump for his belated and probably momentary decision not to do the worst thing possible. “Dr. Birx and I spent a considerable amount of time going over all the data, why we felt this was a best choice of us, and the president accepted it,” Fauci said. In translation, they hit him over the head with the number 2.2 million until he gave in, and then they went out and talked about his “wise and prudent decision.”
By Monday morning, Trump was back to claiming that “We're getting close to winning it. We're getting close.” One day after he was talking about maybe we’ll have as few as 100,000 deaths if we all stay put for another month, and he’s back on “close to winning.”
Trump also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, attacked the doctors and nurses who are currently risking their lives treating COVID-19 patients by suggesting that N95 masks are “going out the back door,” i.e. being stolen rather than used for treatment. Frontline healthcare workers are telling us that their lack of masks and other personal protective equipment is a major emergency and that they are reusing things not meant to be reused, but to Trump, “How do you go from 10 to 20 [thousand masks per week] to 300,000? Ten to 20,000 masks, to 300,000—even though this is different? Something is going on, and you ought to look into it as reporters. Are they going out the back door?” He also accused hospitals of “hoarding” ventilators.
Well, Donald, it’s like this: there’s a pandemic. And what that means is that pieces of equipment, like masks, that aren’t normally used for every single patient become much more essential to treating a new flood of patients.
But at the same time, Trump seemed a little shaken by images of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, where he grew up. “I’ve been watching that for the last week on television. Body bags all over in hallways,” he said. “I have been watching them bring in trailer trucks, freezer trucks—they are freezer trucks because they can’t handle the bodies, there are so many of them. This is essentially in my community in Queens—Queens, New York. I have seen things I’ve never seen before. I mean, I’ve seen them, but I’ve seen them on television in faraway lands.”
Which is interesting, because he’s seeing these images that show him that it is not business as usual in New York hospitals and yet he can’t imagine a reason those same hospitals would need more masks than usual? Also on the Trump-takes-it-seriously front, he talked about an unnamed friend who he said is in a coma with coronavirus. (Though he used “sir” in the story, so … maybe.)
So, yeah. Headline: Trump abandons national suicide plan of crowded pews at Easter for another month of social distancing guidelines. Underlying reality: Trump clearly had to be badgered, through extensive repetition of worst-case scenarios, into abandoning that plan, and he couldn’t resist declaring victory again less than 24 hours later. Trump vividly described the overloading of New York hospitals … but suggested that there must be something nefarious causing those same hospitals to need extra equipment. Three years into Trump’s time in the White House and our media is still not ready to report fully on how dangerous he is.
