Mother of god.

From NPR (via The Week):

In January, Azar "did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the new coronavirus could be a major problem," Diamond said, but he "has not always given the president the worst-case scenario of what could happen. My understanding is [Trump] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall."

Holy mother of god.



From the Los Angeles Times:



In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs. But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.



Holy mother of fcking god.

From Politico:



Just before midnight Wednesday, a doctor asked a group of fellow emergency room physicians on Facebook how they would combat the escalating coronavirus outbreak. “I have direct channel to person now in charge at White House,” Kurt Kloss wrote in his post. The next morning, after hundreds of doctors responded, Kloss explained why he sought the suggestions: Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had asked him for recommendations.

Kloss, whose daughter is married to Kushner’s brother, sent Kushner 12 recommendations Thursday morning. The Facebook crowd-sourcing exercise showed how Trump‘s team is scrambling for solutions to confront the outbreak after weeks of criticism for the administration's sluggish response, a shortage of tests and the president’s own rhetoric downplaying the pandemic. It is now expected to consume the final year of Trump's first term and threaten his campaign for a second term.



This is the response of Camp Runamuck to a global pandemic. Cover the president*’s oversized caboose, fudge the numbers, and give the Dauphin some Internet access? El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago was planning another news conference for Friday, which promised to be a big bag of lies and blame-shifting. (He’s taken to lying about the Obama administration at full volume, so the elderly shut-ins and proud ignorami in his base will have a black guy to blame.) But the fact is that electing a TV clown and real-estate grifter to be president just to own the libs—and because you hate Hillary Rodham Clinton—turns out to have been a bad idea all around. This is an administration that was set up to fail and it has followed its programming precisely.



Holy mother of god. Drew Angerer Getty Images

If it were up to me, I’d impeach him again and, this time, no hearings. Straight to the floor of the House with a privileged resolution and then straight to an up-or-down vote on the articles. If that NPR story is accurate, then he has clearly violated his oath of office and put the health and safety of the nation at risk for his own private political purposes. Let 52 Republican senators defend that with their votes. Let Susan Collins furrow her brow over that as her poll numbers tank. The last time, it was the integrity of our elections that was endangered. This time, it’s Grandma with her asthma. People can identify more with the latter, I think, than with the ratfcking of the distant Volga Bagmen.



Of course, that won’t happen. It’s the wrong thing on which to waste time in these perilous days. It’s why I am not a member of Congress, let alone in leadership. (A grateful nation rejoices.) All we can do is listen to the voices of reason that really are out there. It’s only a matter of time before Dr. Anthony Fauci blows his stack regarding administration* incompetence, I’m thinking. On Thursday, on CNBC, Senator Professor Warren proposed an economic emergency plan that seemed to make so much sense to Jim Cramer than he looked like he might vote for her right there on the air. And Joe Biden gave another strong, earnest presidentialish address on the subject. Local and state officials are doing heroic work. If your governor or state legislator is stepping up, drop them a line and tell them you’re behind them.



The Dauphin will handle this. The Washington Post Getty Images

It looks like new tests for the virus is not far off; both the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo clinic have announced that they’ve developed one. If we can get Camp Runamuck and the president*’s elephantine self-regard out of the way, we might even be able to catch up to South Korea and Senegal with our testing regime. Senegal has developed a test that produces results in four hours. Our president* can’t put on his shoes in four hours.



As it happens, I’ve been re-watching HBO’s tremendous Chernobyl miniseries. There is a scene in the third installment in which Legasov, the nuclear scientist who is trying to break through the fog of official lies and stupidity, argues that the evacuation zone around the demolished plant be extended from 30 km to 300 km, based on the amount of radioactivity present in the ground. Legasov cannot get Scherbina, the party apparatchik assigned to his work, to listen to him. Finally, Legasov explodes:



Maybe I’ve just spent too much time in my lab. Maybe I’m just stupid. Is this really the way it all works? An uninformed arbitrary decision that will cost who knows how many lives made by some apparatchik? Some career party man?



Congratulations, Republicans. Congratulations, conservatives. You’re manage to make yourselves into the Soviet party apparatus of the mid-to-late 1980s, when everything was falling apart and the institutions of government were so petrified and stultified that nobody could do anything at all. You’ve dragged us all along with you, too. Vote them out. Vote them all out. It’s all that’s left to do.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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