In so much as Donald Trump was ever able to act what one might consider “presidential”, during The Corovirus Shitshow with Donald Trump on Friday night, Trump’s basic inability to come to grasp with how thoroughly boned the country is finally began to slowly grind away at the extraordinarily thin veneer that has seen him gain a slight boost from the polls.
In one of thousands of examples of Trump saying the quiet part out loud, Trump used his time in front of an American public dealing with a global pandemic that’s growing at an exponential rate compared to the rest of the world to flat out admitted that he is reluctant to deliver help to anyone he plain doesn’t like.
From Vox;
“I tell him — I mean I’m a different type of person — I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor in Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan,’” Trump said. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”
Trump went one step further, explaining his reasoning: that criticism of him and his administration’s response is unpatriotic, because he identifies himself with the federal government.
“When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA,” Trump said. “It’s not right.”
To recap, America is dealing with a health crisis the likes of which haven’t been seen since before the Great Depression, and his immediate thought isn’t to solve the problem, but to act on petty grudges with people whom he personally disagrees with. This is the American president, on national TV, in front of people, more or less admitting he doesn’t care if people die, because a couple of governors didn’t bend the knee.
As I said yesterday, Trump is a Sith Lord, so he deals in absolutes. In this case, Trump is not able to see past his own grudges or self-relect, or even just give the governors what they want so they’ll leave him alone. Trump can not compute a situation that is bigger than his pettiness. In the addled, sunsetting mind of Trump, there are any two scenarios; one where everyone else gets screwed, or one where he gets screwed.
Not content to basically tell a bunch of people he’d rather let them die struggling for their last breath, Trump also went off on ABC News’ Jon Karl after Karl asked if a ventilator will be used available for every person who needs one.
Under the smallest possible amount of pressure, Trump breaks. Even him finally actually invoking the DPA has less to do with people dying and more to do with a grudge he has against General Motors.
Shit like this will only get worse as the crisis continues, more and more governors (from both sides of the political spectrum) demand that Trump actually do his job, and Trump’s fragile, broken mind continues to struggle to cope. Trump’s enduring legacy as President will be his ability to ride out any bad press until the next news cycle. But as The Atlantic pointed out, there is no next news cycle. The only news cycle is the coronavirus news cycle. It’s not going away, and criticism of Trump will only ramp up as he continues to refuse to take responsibility and refuses to use the powers of the federal government to do anything.
Trump’s been a dickhead and an asshole for a long time. But we’re probably only now starting to see the cracks in whatever facade he’s maintained that allowed him to skirt past other bad press.
Buckle up, folks, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride, and lots of people are going to die.
“When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA,” Trump said. “It’s not right.”
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oh go fuck yourself
Trump’s book should have been titled “The Art of False Equivalency.”
No, fuckwit, none of those things is REMOTELY LIKE ANY OF THE OTHER THINGS.
The ventilator issue is real AF. My NYC ER nurse sister said that last Sat when she went to work there were 75 people on ventilators. By Wed – there were 150 – at one hospital. Her hospital is a private hospital – not even a public one. She says that normal respiratory procedure is to put people on nebulizers when they present with restricted breathing- but nebulizers aren’t self contained. They output steam – which is just spewing virus out into the room. That’s why so many ventilators are needed. She says the respiratory team is basically an intubation team right now. Also, since there aren’t many surgeries being performed a lot of the surgical nurses have been rotated to other units and they’re not used to dealing with conscious patients.
She also said that they went down into the basement of their hospital and started pulling out ventilators that hadn’t been used in years.
I truly believe he wants people in the blue states to die. It increases his odds of winning and he will be able to say, “well look how many people died in the democrat run states”. If he sends people back to church on Easter that will be the end of it staying blue state dominate as this will be a shitshow in every state.
I 110% agree with you. Of course, the virus is just ramping up in the red states – so we’ll see how many of them are crying in a week or so. It’s already ramped up here in Ga but Kemp won’t do a state wide shelter in place so the different Mayors and county CEO’s are doing it. I’m in Dekalb Co and our shelter in place goes into effect at 9pm tonight.
There’s a whole other thing to be written about red state governors making this a fucking political issue and disregarding the health of their citizens to fall in line with the President, and the fact those states will see their case numbers start to explode roughly around the time that everyone else starts to flatten their respective curves…but I’m just so tired of everything I can’t be bothered to do it.
Problem for Trump is that the virus disproportionately hits the old, which makes up a significant chunk of his voter base. He lets this thing run rampant, it won’t be Democrats that suffer the most. Of course, the Orange Idiot is incapable of thinking ahead or considering possible ramifications, because he’s too stupid to think beyond the immediate.
Only problem is, the majority of blue-staters get their news from a responsible source and saw the danger before it unfolded. Most of the skeptics and deniers get their news from Fox News almost exclusively. The irony is, Trump may wind up killing his voting bloc through his own sheer stupidity.
“Don’t call the woman in Michigan“
Which woman, specifically? Oh, you mean the GOVERNOR?
Fuck you and your I Am The State bullshit.
I think there’s a real possibility that even now we’re overestimating the man…it’s an incredibly complex problem with a bewildering array of moving parts so we all want to think there’s a few different elements in play…but honestly I think his whole life has been about framing everything as transactional & buying the pot (mostly with money he doesn’t really have on a net basis) rather than ever understanding how the deal could work if he had an ounce of good faith
…& I think his belief about the current circumstances is essentially that he holds the cards & therefore ought to be able to demand that he gets what he wants in every transaction…so no real change there in many ways…meanwhile the context has grown so severe that the absence of anything meaningfully answering to the description of an actual president is lit up like a forest fire?
I don’t know that it’s “the” thing that gets me about it given all the others but the sheer failure of imagination consistently demonstrated by the quids he demands to pro his quo are so unbearably petty…how is the world so fucked up a place as to reward that parody of fucking human being at any level?
This is why I don’t believe in karma.
In all of this, the news stations “have” to air his briefing live. My TV station cuts away when he gets to the Q&A portion so what people are getting is his “presidential” huffing and puffing while he reads off his pre-written statements. He’s been successful so far in shifting the blame to others his whole life and the people of this country are dumb so his approval rating his going to remain the same, if not get higher. You’ve got AIDS failure lady Dr.Birx praising him effusively now and not one journalist is going to call him a liar at this juncture.
I’m not entirely sure if the shit will ever hit the fan. If more red states start having all of their loved ones dying, would anyone wake up? Here in Florida DeSantis is refusing to call for a stay at home and will never do so now because he’s dug in so hard. Instead, he’s in line with Trump and will “quarantine” people traveling from certain states.
These mfers honestly think (or maliciously ignoring facts) that the virus can travel wherever it damn well pleases and it’s not a matter of if a place will get it, but when.
Understandably, Trump dribbles so much from his mouth that it was barely reported but in a presser earlier in the week, Trump was asked if he wouldn’t let his companies take stimulus money. He then launched in a protracted whining session about how no one (the media) doesn’t thank him or appreciate that he donates his president’s salary when he doesn’t have to :(!