Trumpism Infects All Living Tissue in Our Republic

Trying to keep up with all the damage being done by the Trump administration is an impossible task, but am thankful for the reporting of Helene Cooper et al. in the New York Times for this appalling and demoralizing example of Trumpist bullying deployed against men and women in uniform:

Captain Brett Crozier

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s acting Navy secretary, in a profanity-laced reprimand delivered Monday, criticized sailors aboard the stricken aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt for cheering their captain, who was removed after he appealed for help as coronavirus spread throughout the warship.

The Navy’s top civilian, Thomas B. Modly, delivered his message over the ship’s loudspeaker system and deepened the raw us-versus-them atmosphere that had already engulfed the carrier. It also exposed the schism between a commander in chief with little regard for the military’s chain of command and the uniformed Navy that is sworn to follow him.

Like much in the Trump administration, what began as a seemingly straightforward challenge — the arrival of coronavirus onboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — has now engulfed the military, leading to far-reaching questions of undue command influence and the demoralization of young men and women who promise to protect the country. At its heart, the crisis aboard the Theodore Roosevelt has become a window into what matters, and what does not, in an administration where remaining on the right side of a mercurial president is valued above all else.

The crew of the Roosevelt had already registered its discontent with the Trump administration’s decision to remove the commander, by cheering for Capt. Brett E. Crozier as he walked down the gangway last week and left the ship....

The Body Count -- Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham

Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump

News leaked this morning that White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham will leave her position as Trump's chief spokeswoman and will likely return to the White House's East Wing to work for first lady Melania Trump.

Grisham, who stepped into the job less than a year ago, did not host a single press briefing at any point during her tenure and maintained a considerably lower profile than her predecessors in the job, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

"We Don't Need No Stinking Medical Experts!"

I refuse to watch Trump's daily "Ain't I Great?" TV appearances, masquerading as virus updates, but apparently, according to press reports, yesterday's was a doozy for the way Trump shut down Dr. Antony Fauci's attempt to answer a legitimate question. I'm thankful for Allyson Chiu and Meagan Flynn's blow-by-blow account:

President Trump spent a portion of Sunday’s press briefing yet again promoting an unproven treatment for the novel coronavirus, repeatedly asking, “What do we have to lose?”

So toward the end, a CNN reporter turned to Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, for his opinion on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine with a sharper question: “What is the medical evidence?”

Standing at the microphone, Fauci opened his mouth — but before he could speak, the answer came out of Trump’s instead.

“Do you know how many times he’s answered that question?” Trump cut in. “Maybe 15.”

A tight smile stretched across Fauci’s face. His eyes, framed by a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, flicked quickly to Trump. He glanced back at the reporter, who was saying to the president, “The question is for the doctor. … He’s your medical expert, correct?”

Fauci’s smile, for just a moment, was all teeth now. Trump raised his finger sternly, telling the journalist, “You don’t have to ask the question,” and so Fauci didn’t answer it, and the news conference shuffled right along.

The unexpected interruption was an extraordinary moment even in this season of brash behavior exhibited by the president during his daily briefings. While Trump has been at odds with Fauci in the past, repeatedly clouding his administration’s public health messaging, the president has never shut down his top medical expert so abruptly and publicly before, intervening to keep him from answering. In other contexts, the president routinely calls on Fauci for medical questions.

But had he been permitted to speak, Fauci’s answer, which he’s given many times, probably would not have tempered Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of the antimalarial drug as a potential treatment for covid-19. Trump, advised by his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, among others, has touted the drug for weeks....

"Late Capitalism Has Always Been a Death Cult"

One consolation: Crises always bring out good writing. Like Laurie Penny's "This Is Not the Apocalypse You Were Looking For," which contains this succinct summation of the Trumpists who are in control of government right now:

...late capitalism has always been a death cult. The tiny-minded incompetents in charge cannot handle a problem that can’t be fixed simply by sacrificing poor, vulnerable, and otherwise expendable individuals. Faced with a crisis they can’t solve with violence, they dithered and whined and wasted time that can and will be counted in corpses. There has been no vision, because these men never imagined the future beyond the image of themselves on top of the human heap, cast in gold. For weeks, the speeches from podiums have suggested that a certain amount of brutal death is a reasonable price for other people to pay to protect the current financial system. The airwaves have been full of spineless right-wing zealots so focused on putting the win in social Darwinism that they keep accidentally saying the quiet bit out loud....

Jared Kushner, The Cherry Atop our Coronavirus Sundae

Trump's son-in-law has failed upwards so often, as a real estate developer, as a newspaper publisher, as a maker of Middle East peace, so why not become "the point of contact for many agency officials who know that he can force action and issue decisions without going to the president"? He's perfect for the job of taking on the Coronavirus, since he has zero medical expertise nor any other experience to suggest he has a clue. He's the ultimate post turtle.

His track record so far?

He promoted a nationwide screening website and a widespread network of drive-through testing sites. Neither materialized. He claimed to have helped narrow the rift between his father-in-law and General Motors in a presidential blowup over ventilator production, one administration official said, but the White House is still struggling to procure enough ventilators and other medical equipment. (Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman, et al.)

On Thursday, Kushner got pushed to the podium at the daily White House briefing as some sort of new public face of Trump administration competency in the face of a global pandemic. Kushner promptly stepped on his weenie, suggesting that the Federal stockpile of medical protective equipment belongs to the Trumps and the Kushners, not to the rest of us. For the record, and according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the role of the Strategic National Stockpile "is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies” (Allyson Chiu).

Then Kushner took his father-in-law's tact in blaming the nation's governors for the crisis: The health crisis, he said, has revealed which leaders are “better managers than others.” “Some governors you speak to, or senators, and they don’t know what’s in their state,” he said, later adding, “Don’t ask us for things when you don’t know what you have in your own state. Just because you’re scared, you ask your medical professionals and they don’t know. You have to take inventory of what you have in your own state and then you have to be able to show that there’s a real need.”

Yeah, I feel so much better with Kushner in charge. And bring back the Your Pillow guy! He seemed nice.

The Body Count -- Michael Atkinson

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Getting Pushed Off Luxury Liner Trump

Yesterday Trump announced he was firing the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, effective in 30 days.

Atkinson, a Trump appointee who took the position in 2018, informed Congress of the whistleblower complaint about alleged improprieties during a telephone conversation between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019 that eventually led to impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Since being acquitted of impeachment charges, Trump has also fired former Ambassador Gordon Sondland and reassigned Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, both of whom testified against the president during the hearings.

The only loyalty in our current kakistocracy is loyalty to Trump.

The Body Count -- Captain Brett Crozier

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Getting Pushed Off Luxury Liner Trump

Captain Brett Crozier, the commanding officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was removed from his post because he sent a letter soliciting help on behalf of his crew as scores of sailors on the aircraft carrier contracted the lethal coronavirus. Crozier's "sin": He sent the letter directly to senior officials, skipping several rungs on the chain of command.

The sacking of Crozier was very unpopular with the sailors and crew on the carrier. They gave him a hero's sendoff as he left the ship.

We Must Be Thankful for Roy Cooper

Seeing other Southern governors in action (rather, inaction), we can be thankful that NC Governor Roy Cooper has been proactive in shutting down social interaction to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I can only imagine what shape we'd be in if Pat McCrory had won reelection, that pathetically weak toe-stepper, or God help us! if Dan Forest were sitting in that chair.

The example of governors south of us has been hair-raising. This intercepted Facebook post from a Georgia reporter will bring you up to date on why the South gets stereotyped as dumber than a 2-dollar dog:

The governor of Georgia [Brian Kemp] said he did not know asymptomatic people could carry and transmit the virus unawares until yesterday [April Fool's Day]. One public health official said simply “what rock has he been under?” It would be nice to say that Kemp is governor of Georgia by virtue of his cornering the bless-his-heart vote, as in “Bless his heart, he’s so stupid that, if we don’t elect him governor, he never could get a real job.” But it’s worse than that. But whatever it is, there is a pandemic of it among Southern governors. DeSantis in Florida said pretty much the same thing yesterday after earlier virtually ordering churches and synagogues to keep having services as usual. Kay Ivey in Alabama, explaining why she’s so stupid, said something so much stupider to illuminate us on why she wouldn’t get real that I don’t even know what it means: “Y'all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York State, we are not California. Right now is not the time to order people to shelter in place.” And they’re all leading their people to a hell of a time by letting them continue to debate such issues of whether this panic is going to adversely affect whether Nick Sabin should have Crimson Tide spring football practice.

Kemp’s motivation for dillydallying was to get back in Low T’s good graces ["Low T" is his nickname for Trump] after not appointing Trump’s Duke of Buttkissing Doug Collins to an open US Senate seat. [Kemp instead appointed Kelly Loeffler to the seat, who recently got implicated for selling off millions in stocks because she had inside info on how bad the pandemic was going to get.] It worked to some extent as Low T twisted himself in knots today trying not to answer a question about how badly our dipwad governor put our state in the weeds. As one put it, an “insane aversion” to reality.

100,000 or 220,000? The Deal That Trump Has Dealt Us

Yesterday, March 31, 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told radio host Hugh Hewitt that the impeachment of President Trump distracted the administration’s attention away from the coronavirus crisis. Plain English version: Trump screwed up because the Democrats were mean to him.

Let's see: The US Senate, led by McConnell, acquitted Trump on February 5. The first US coronavirus death was reported on February 29. Between the 5th and the 29th, what was Trump doing?

Feb. 10 -- He held a campaign rally (Manchester)
Feb. 15 -- He golfed (Mar-a-Lago)
Feb. 19 -- He held a campaign rally (Phoenix)
Feb. 21 -- He held a campaign rally (Las Vegas)
Feb. 28 -- He held a campaign rally (North Charleston)

During the last rally on Feb. 28 (according to Snopes), Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's coronavirus response to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." During the speech he also downplayed the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu. This now discarded Trump company line is still boilerplate for many on the right, including a handful of Trumpist Republican governors who refuse to take steps to protect their citizens. DeSantis in Florida. Tate Reeves in Mississippi. Et cetera.

The CDC issued its first warning about the virus on January 8th. In January alone -- while he might conceivably have been "distracted" by impeachment -- Trump held four rallies -- on Jan. 9 (Toledo), Jan. 14 (Milwaukee), Jan. 28 (Wildwood, NJ), and Jan. 30 (Des Moines).

Yeah, he was distracted all right