The Donald Trump Score Card

Trump's urge to get even with people transcends pragmatic political needs of him and the country.

An example is his sabotage of the healthcare system to retaliate against a previous administration. Revenge means more to Trump than his own downtrodden constituents who voted for him and were depending on him for help.

Another example is Trump insulting the governor of Michigan in the heat of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump won MI by 0.23% in 2016, and the swing state is critical to his reelection.

 

So who's happy?

 

Authoritarian Populists Have Six Classic Moves. Trump’s Response to COVID-19 Uses Five of Them.
While the president may not be using the coronavirus to consolidate power, Americans should still be worried about the threat he poses to democracy.
Kristy Parker, Counsel at Protect Democracy
Yascha Mounk, Contributing writer at The Atlantic
April 2, 2020 6:30 AM ET

Authoritarian Populists Have Six Classic Moves. Trump’s Response to COVID-19 Uses Five of Them.

excerpt

"First, Trump engaged in a campaign of disinformation to downplay the significance of the virus and overplay his personal success in keeping it at bay.

Second, he has attempted to quash dissent by limiting the press’s access to public-health officials critical of his response; he has also threatened to withhold aid from states who don’t “treat us well,” or who question the effectiveness of his administration.

Third, he has sought to delegitimize vulnerable communities by doubling down on restrictive immigration policies at the southern border that have no relation to preventing the virus’s spread, such as the border wall, and that may even exacerbate it.

Fourth, he has threatened to exercise powers he does not legally possess to “open the economy”—overriding the authority of governors and mayors to impose stay-at-home orders and business closures. (Thankfully, he has, for now, backed off that threat.)

Finally, in this same vein, he has suggested that he may undermine the independence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by forcing it to ease social-distancing guidelines against the advice of the agency’s own leaders. Even when Trump purports to listen to the experts, as he apparently did this weekend in walking back his vow to precipitously change the CDC’s guidance, his rhetoric that the guidelines are his to alter remains worrisome."

 

A Ventilator Stockpile, With One Hitch: Thousands Do Not Work
While President Trump has assured states that thousands of ventilators remain at the ready, thousands more are in storage, unmaintained or otherwise unusable.
By David E. Sanger, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Nicholas Kulish
April 1, 2020

A Ventilator Stockpile, With One Hitch: Thousands Do Not Work

excerpt:

"WASHINGTON — President Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that the federal government is holding 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals around the nation as they struggle to keep the most critically ill patients alive.

But what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January. By then, the coronavirus crisis was already underway.

The revelation came in response to inquiries to the Department of Health and Human Services after state officials reported that some of the ventilators they received were not operational, stoking speculation that the administration had not kept up with the task of maintaining the stockpile."

 

^^^ Trump promised ventilators... He did not promise that they would work. That was the job of those guys he fired last summer and never replaced.... Damn those guys.

 

This was to be expected. Did you notice how they were being stored? Basically in aircraft shipping cages lined up in a warehouse. These are not hunks of pipe or crates of engines, they are precision instruments. As such they need to be stored in a clean, dry environment. The best would be fed dry air from a Munters unit. In a warehouse this means setting up sealed plastic tents.

So this is just as much an issue of the destination station's responsibility as that of the sender.

 

I often ask myself, "If there truly is a God somewhere, why did he allow Republicans to exist?"

 

Jared Kushner's Appearance At Donald Trump's Coronavirus Press Conference Left Many Scratching Their Heads
By Christian Long
April 2, 2020 07:51 pm EDT

Jared Kushner's Appearance At Donald Trump's Coronavirus Press Conference Left Many Scratching Their Heads

 

Aaron Rupar@atrupar

"Here's Jared Kushner going for the world record of most meaningless corporate buzzwords used in a single one-minute video clip."

Aaron Rupar on Twitter

 

Viruses, tornadoes and earthquakes exist as natural results of the laws of physics. They can be quite annoying, and I find gravity in particular to be a real drag. We might have been better off with another set of laws. Then again, we probably wouldn't exist, so I'm not complaining. As for viruses, they occupy the frontier between living and non-living matter, lacking the ability to self-replicate but having the ability to do so in a living host by commandeering its replication machinery. L.Vllarreal, V. DeFilippis, and P. Bell even contend that the cell nucleus in animals and plants may be of viral origin--evolving from a persisting large DNA virus that colonized prokaryotic cells.Are Viruses Alive? In that case, we may owe the little buggers a debt of gratitude.

 

Jared Kushner's Appearance At Any Press Conference Left Many Scratching Their Heads. fixed

 

Okie, my question was meant to be rhetorical.

 

Governor DeSantis has been aligned with Trump throughout the coronavirus, deferring to the White House on what steps he should take next.



As coronavirus cases surge in Florida, fears mount that action came too late
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Lori Rozsa and Brady Dennis
April 2, 2020 at 6:53 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/coro...45362a-742f-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html

excerpt:

"As recently as Tuesday, DeSantis said he had no plans to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, in part because the White House coronavirus task force had not explicitly recommended it.

A day later, facing mounting criticism as caseloads multiplied, the governor ordered the state’s nearly 21 million residents to stay indoors for 30 days unless they are pursuing essential services or activities. His executive order takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

“It makes sense to make this move now,” DeSantis said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference, saying he had spoken with President Trump about the decision. “We don’t really know how all these measures work, because it’s never been tried on American society before. But I think we find ourselves in a situation where we have a national pause, and we need to deal with this front and center.”"

 

No sign of the administrator of FEMA.



“Who’s In Charge Here?”: Donald Trump’s Latest Marathon Coronavirus Briefing Adds To Confusion Over Supply Chain Of Masks, Ventilators
April 2, 2020 5:48pm

Donald Trump’s Latest Coronavirus Briefing Adds To Confusion – Deadline

excerpt:

"The White House, though, has said that the federal government should be a “secondary source.”

“They have to work that out,” Trump said of the states. “Long before this pandemic arrived, they should have been on the open market just buying. There was no competition. You could have gotten a great price. The state has to stock up. It’s like one of those things, they waited.”

Then he insisted, “So much is being done right now, in terms of protective gears, protective outfits. A lot is being done.”

Kushner, who said he is assisting Vice President Mike Pence, the leader of the coronavirus task force, said that, “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”"

 

U.S. Navy Fires Captain of Virus-Stricken Ship Who Begged For Help
‘RELIEVED OF DUTY’
Emma Tucker
Updated Apr. 02, 2020 8:20PM ET /
Published Apr. 02, 2020 5:12PM ET

U.S. Navy Fires Captain of Virus-Stricken Ship Who Begged For Help

excrerpt:

"The U.S. Navy has fired the captain of an aircraft carrier with more than 100 sailors infected with the novel coronavirus after he pleaded for help in a leaked letter, saying “sailors don’t need to die,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Captain Brett Crozier, who commands the USS Theodore Roosevelt, wrote the scathing letter to the Navy on Tuesday, stating “this will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do.” He wrote: “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our sailors.” Soon after the letter was published by the Chronicle, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said the warship would be disinfected and 4,000 crew members would be allowed to disembark. However, Modly also announced Crozier’s “relief of duty” on Thursday night. Unnamed officials told Reuters that Crozier was being relieved not because he wrote the letter and sent it up through the chain of command but because the Navy believes he leaked it to the media."

 

Even though Trump has been fuming about Kushner who weeks ago was telling him the virus was a hoax, it appears that Trump is going to stick with him.

Jared was a speaker at Trump's Thursday virus briefing (political grandstanding occasions that have featured the usual big box CEO cronies and other assorted recycled garbage from his past events.)

 

American can feel confident that their lives are in the hands of Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks.

The Jared Kushner who told Trump weeks earlier that the coronavirus was a hoax.

The recycled Hope Hicks who has returned to the Trump administration through the revolving door for a second round.

 

Trump’s career is built on finding shortcuts. Against the virus, there are none.
By Marc Fisher
April 03, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...uts-against-virus-there-are-none/?arc404=true

excerpt:

"From his earliest days as a real estate developer through his first three years as president, Trump stuck with a formula: a constant patter of provocation, pride and preening, all in service of finding the quickest path to a claim of victory. “Anytime any obstacle came up, he told us to ignore it, whether it was a building department citation or politicians denying permission for something,” said Barbara Res, who spent 18 years as Trump’s top construction executive. “ ‘Just do what we need to do,’ he’d say. . . . Back then, the worst thing that could happen was a fine. Now, it’s people’s lives.”

Those high stakes, and the president’s inability to bend the coronavirus to his will, finally forced a course correction Tuesday. Unlike at nearly every other turn in his singular American life, there would be no shortcut this time. By telling Americans to stay home and by accepting scientists’ dire projections about how many will die, Trump bowed to reality. The man who rose to the most powerful position in the world by ignoring rules and subverting norms seemed at last to have conceded that there can be no end run around this pathogen."

 

Desperate for insight, Trump's team turns to the past to try and save his legacy
One aide studied the Spanish flu while another reviewed FDR’s inaugural address, searching for inspiration to tackle today’s crisis.
By GABBY ORR
04/03/2020 04:30 AM EDT

Desperate for insight, Trump's team turns to the past to try and save his legacy

excerpt:

"Bush announced Operation Enduring Freedom against Taliban forces in Afghanistan only after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. President Woodrow Wilson waited two years after winning reelection with the slogan “he kept us out of war” to initiate America’s entry into World War I, a decision he made after German forces resumed submarine warfare in the British Isles. Roosevelt declared war against the Great Depression four years after Black Tuesday, while the American economy remained paralyzed and unemployment hovered around 25 percent.

But for Trump, there is no precipitating event — no Civil War, Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 or Bay of Pigs — that will irreversibly shape his legacy as it relates to the Covid-19 pandemic. He lacks a singular moment he can point to in Rose Garden appearances or campaign ads to rally the public behind this “war.” Instead, he is stuck with wild stock market fluctuations and a rolling death count, all while he gets attacked by his political opponents for a long string of loose comments downplaying the risks of the novel coronavirus in January and February."

 

Trump's handlers seem to be aware of this. Trump is using the term 'China virus' to try to stigmatize and equate the virus with China, a recognizable geographic and political entity that he had already made an enemy.