Last week White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx let it be publicly leaked that she was "distressed" over the growing influence of new task force member Dr. Scott Atlas, a blustering Fox-promoted neuroradiologist with no infectious disease experience but a bevy of not-expert opinions that just happen to match up with Trump's own desire to simply ignore the pandemic and see what happens. Specifically, Birx and other experts are worried about Atlas' dismissals of social distancing and masks both, and his theories that those things are just "prolonging the problem" by "preventing population immunity."
Not to worry, assured an Anonymous Administration Official: Atlas is just bringing "fresh eyes" to the pandemic. It's not like he's going to kill us all.
Team That Guy Is Probably Going To Kill Us All now appears to have another high-profile member. NBC News is reporting that in an overheard phone conversation on a commercial airline flight, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield groused to an unknown ally about the Scott Atlas problem. NBC says Redfield suggested Atlas "is arming Trump with misleading data about a range of issues, including questioning the efficacy of masks, whether young people are susceptible to the virus and the benefits of herd immunity."
"Everything he says is false," Redfield complained to his unknown "colleague."
This tracks with Birx's complaints, and with Atlas' own public statements. Despite Atlas denying in forceful terms that he was promoting "herd immunity" during a recent Trump-Atlas press appearance, Redfield and Birx both are reportedly warning that Atlas is feeding Trump known false pandemic claims as he encourages Trump's own anti-mask, anti-lockdown preferences.
And Atlas, of course, is now apparently Trump's favorite and the most influential task forcer because of it.
There's no way this can end well. It's another testament to just how thoroughly committed conservatism has become to television-blustering contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism. Trump botched the handling of the pandemic, grotesquely, through apathy and alternate reality claims that it would simply not become a problem. When it did, Republicans rallied behind the theory that Trump did not fail, and that doing absolutely nothing was, in fact, an act of genius. Fox News hunted for contrarian nonsense-spewers who would back up the notion that whatever Trump was currently doing was in fact The Right Way; Trump sees the contrarian nonsense-spewers and, impressed by their suckuptitude, appoints them to prominent roles. The sycophants now have power to brush aside whichever unpleasant scientists, legal experts, or governmental experts are currently making Donald sad.
When you start out every argument with the claim that Donald Trump is, despite having both arms trapped in vending machines, a sublime genius whose every move is the right move, then work backwards to find new toadies willing to defend whatever it is Trump has done, you end up precisely where Republicanism has ended up: All toadies, all the way down, and an incompetent, bumbling government that cannot muster a sensible response to any crisis.
Where Trump and Atlas are going on this one is obvious. Trump's intent is to pry open as much of the economy as necessary—including schools, sports, and whatever else he can muster—in order to fake a momentary return to normality that will make October and November voters hate him slightly less. Whether that results in massive new surges of cases is of no immediate concern.
If Trump wins the election, his approach to the pandemic becomes irrelevant and he will skate through the next four years, freed from having to defend himself. If he loses, Republicans will spend the period from November to January attempting to intentionally make the pandemic and economy worse, to discredit Biden before his arrival. There's no scenario in which Republicans are spurred to treat the pandemic seriously after November—at least not nationally. Each state will be on its own.
