In case you missed it, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago went on teevee with Sean Hannity on Thursday night and explained in rather precise detail how his pandemic shakedown is going to work. For example, he is not happy with Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of the state of Michigan, where Detroit has become a hot zone in which hospitals are overwhelmed and already preparing contingency plans to triage patients in order to ration things like ventilators. In several appearances addressing the crisis in her state, Whitmer has been critical of the federal response—or lack thereof—to the pandemic. The president* told Hannity:

"She is a new governor, and it's not been pleasant ... "We've had a big problem with the young — a woman governor. You know who I'm talking about — from Michigan. We don't like to see the complaints...She doesn't get it done, and we send her a lot. Now, she wants a declaration of emergency, and, you know, we'll have to make a decision on that. But Michigan is a very important state. I love the people of Michigan.”



Whitmer, meanwhile, in an interview with WWJ Newsradio in Detroit, explained what being on the business end of the pandemic shakedown was like.

"What I've gotten back is that vendors with whom we've procured contracts -- They're being told not to send stuff to Michigan," Whitmer said live on air. "It's really concerning, I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”

Also on Hannity, the president* expressed doubts that the ventilator shortage in New York is as grave as Governor Andrew Cuomo says it is.

"New York is a bigger deal, but it's going to go, also. But I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they are going to be. I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.”

On Wednesday, of course, talking to another Fox News meat puppet, Trump made the general outlines of the shakedown quite plain. From Business Insider:

"It's a two-way street," Trump said of his discussions with governors about providing their states with federal aid. "They have to treat us well also. They can't say, 'Oh gee, we should get this, we should get that.' We're doing a great job.” Trump used New York an example of how the federal government had put forward resources to support states. "We're literally building hospitals and medical centers," he said. "And then I hear that there's a problem with ventilators — well, we sent them ventilators, and they could have had 15 or 16,000, all they had to do was order them two years ago. But they decided not to do it. They can't blame us for that.”

The question facing us all now as citizens is whether or not the response of our country to a worldwide pandemic is being driven by the basic strategy of the Piranha Brothers. That is, whether or not the president* is withholding vital medical aid during a national health crisis for the purpose of muzzling criticism of his obvious incompetence, and for the auxiliary purpose of gaining political advantage in November’s election. If the answer to either of those questions is “yes,” then we have an unreconstructed monster running the country and there’s no telling what he might do next.

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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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