Trump in Crisis Mode Over CoronaVirus: Who Will Get Blamed?
We have no way of knowing how big the Covid-19/CoronaVirus will be. The Center for Disease Control says we should be prepared for the worst.
White House Advisor Larry Kudlow took to cable TV yesterday to say the US has contained CoronaVirus, just hours after the CDC warned Americans to prepare for significant disruptions to their lives.
Here is the link to the CDC news about the disease. (Facts matter)
At Fox News, they’re blaming the messenger:
https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1232476834664632320?s=20
President Trump says it’s a media/Democratic conspiracy to cause panic with the stock markets.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1232652371832004608?s=20
Trump “told advisers he does not want the administration to do or say anything that would further spook the markets. He remains worried that any large-scale outbreak could hurt his reelection bid”
As filmmaker Judd Apatow pointed out this morning, the president doesn’t have much choice but to play the blame game.
“Trump doesn’t believe in science. He doesn’t believe in medicine. He doesn’t believe in climate change. He doesn’t believe it is necessary to eat vegetables. He doesn’t believe in exercise. How is he going to support scientists and doctors fighting a global pandemic?”
Having fired the pandemic response personnel in the executive branch of government in 2018, it’s likely the President doesn’t have the data to make a real assessment.
And who could forget:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/519429014684184576?s=20
(There were TWO cases of Ebola in the US during that epidemic.)
As Senator Chris Murphy pointed out on Tuesday, Trump is still pushing cuts to the budgets of all the agencies that fight pandemics, and has shut down 37 of 47 global anti-pandemic programs.
One of his department heads told Republican Senator Kennedy the mortality rate for Covid-19 was about the same as the seasonal flu: .1%. In fact, at this point, available data says the mortality rate is closer to 2%, roughly the same as the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918.
https://twitter.com/paleofuture/status/1232385716463656960?s=20
Maybe we’ll get a coronavirus czar appointed…
Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb is among a handful of officials being discussed for the role of coronavirus czar, but a senior administration official stressed that President Donald Trump will make the final call and has not yet made a decision about how to move forward. Trump returned from a trip to India early Wednesday morning and quickly announced a 6 p.m. press conference to discuss the response.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is currently leading the administration's coronavirus efforts, which have come under fire after the health department botched the rollout of coronavirus lab tests and left hundreds of Americans aboard a quarantined cruise ship where coronavirus rapidly spread. White House officials are worried that a bungled response to the coronavirus could put Trump's reelection at risk.
The White House’s coronavirus task force is meeting with Trump this afternoon before the press conference but selecting a czar is not yet on the agenda, an official said.
https://twitter.com/JohnBerman/status/1232681223652347905?s=20
Finally, speaking of diseases, there’s Rush Limbaugh.
“It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of, Communist China,” he said, attacking the self-described democratic socialist who has taken a commanding lead among Democrats vying for the presidential nomination. “That’s where it came from. It didn’t come from an American lab. It didn’t escape from an American research lab. It hasn’t been spread by Americans. It starts out in a communist country.”
But wait! There's more!
https://twitter.com/MarshallCohen/status/1232733193175998464?s=20
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