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The cult of Trump is a threat to untold numbers of American lives

Under furious pressure, President Trump is now backing off his push to quickly reopen the U.S. economy, and has instead agreed to extend the federal government’s strict social-distancing guidelines through at least the end of April.

This is being widely portrayed as a surrender — to facts, data and scientific realities that Trump tried to make disappear, before finally accepting that his magical reality-bending powers only go so far.

Which provides an occasion to suggest a deep reset in the language we’re using to describe the extraordinary dereliction of leadership we’re seeing from Trump, and from those officials around the country who have followed his lead.

By now, you’ve probably heard media figures claim that the stark differences between public officials over the true nature and scale of the coronavirus threat are rooted in “tribalism” or “polarization.”

These differences represent a “deepening partisan divide,” a new Associated Press piece reports, adding: “The divergent approaches are evidence that not even a global pandemic can bridge the gaping political divisions of the Trump era.”

This is true as far as it goes. But like so many other efforts to find language adequate to capturing Trump’s daily depravities and degradations, it’s profoundly insufficient.

When one set of officials shapes its response to a public health emergency around facts, data, public health expertise and science, and another set — with many exceptions, to be sure — relentlessly downplays that emergency, largely because Trump has demanded this for nakedly self-interested political reasons, words like “tribalism” or “partisanship” risk obscuring more than they clarify.

Indeed, this formulation does a disservice to the Republicans who have chosen not to slavishly follow Trump.

Trump’s abrupt reversal
Trump’s announcement of an extension in social distancing recommendations came after he spent days suggesting he wanted America to get back to work, in defiance of health officials. That came after Trump downplayed coronavirus for two months to avoid rattling markets and his reelection efforts, badly hampering the federal response and helping to produce our current dire straits.

In reversing course, Trump finally acknowledged coronavirus could claim 200,000 U.S. lives. The New York Times reports:

Quote:

One adviser said the president recognized that the data about the potential impact of the virus in the United States was bad, and could not be bent to his will.

Trump’s apparent realization that he cannot bend data to his will comes as we’re pressing up against nearly 150,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S., and 2,500 deaths.

But compounding Trump’s damage is the fact that numerous public officials around the country have followed his lead.

Stark differences
The AP piece, which contains very good reporting, looks at the stark divergence between GOP and Democratic leaders in handling coronavirus. As the AP concludes, Republican leaders “emboldened” by Trump’s “rosy outlook” have been “far more likely to resist the most aggressive social distancing.”

The governors of Oklahoma and West Virginia have recommended that people continue going out to dinner. And as David Leonhardt put it:

Quote:

Some Republican governors, following Trump’s lead, are also rejecting those experts’ pleas: There are beaches open in Florida, restaurants open in Georgia and Missouri and many people out and about in Oklahoma and Texas.

And as Jonathan Cohn documents, Florida’s GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, earned Trump’s praise precisely because he did not follow public health recommendations, and instead followed Trump in minimizing the crisis.

Then there’s Tate Reeves, the Republican governor of Mississippi. He has allowed most businesses to stay open, including restaurants, though with limited table service. The AP reports this:

Quote:

Reeves dismissed those who think he’s not doing enough as enemies of Trump who “don’t like the fact that I’m a conservative and I’m willing to pray.”

The cultlike quality to all of this is unmistakable. Meanwhile, according to Nate Silver’s calculations, while coronavirus cases remain concentrated in blue states, they are beginning to increase faster in red ones.

It bears repeating that Republican governors Mike DeWine of Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland have been exemplary in their embrace of strict measures.

A deep perversity
When Trump announced his reversal, he also tore into the media and into Democratic governors for daring to criticize him, accusing them of exaggerating his failures.

Echoing this, Sen. Marco Rubio says the media “can’t contain their glee” at mounting U.S. deaths, thus offering a cultlike defense of Trump that is beneath the Florida Republican.

This is profoundly perverse, because Trump actually owes a major debt to the media and those governors. The media’s scrutiny is precisely what compelled Trump to reverse course, and those governors are on the front lines of enforcing the social distancing (while absorbing the political responsibility for doing so) that Trump sneered at for so long.

So they are responsible for reorienting Trump onto a path that is likely to save untold lives.

Yet at the same time, those who followed Trump’s lead may have put many in danger, as the AP concludes, without quite saying so directly:

Quote:

The fierce tribalism that has characterized debates over immigration, taxes and health care is now coloring policymaking during a coronavirus outbreak that threatens countless lives and local economies across the nation.

That is both an exceptionally stark statement — these differences do “threaten countless lives and local economies” — and a retreat from clearly explaining what causes them.

The gulf between those demanding a response in keeping with public health expertise and those refusing such a response — and even claiming that demands for more action can only reflect animosity to Trump — is not mere “tribalism” or “partisanship.”

One side is prioritizing science and the imperative of erring on the side of caution to protect as many American lives as possible. The other is actively submerging both of those to a kind of cultish devotion to the perceived political needs and demands of the leader.

And we need to find the right language to say so.

The cult of Trump is a threat to untold numbers of American lives

… Where, ever, in all this has Trump accepted blame for anything?

FAKE NEWS: CBS News Uses Footage Of Italian Emergency Room To Show Conditions In New York

That clip was taken in Italy.

But of course, we’re all supposed to accept these clowns as ‘reputable news sources’.

Sure they are.

Speaking of the Kentucky Guns show footage, who blew it worse? CBS or ABC?

Trump Openly Admits Voting Reforms In COVID Relief Bill Would Endanger Republicans

You’re not supposed to say the quiet parts out loud, Mr. President!

On Monday morning, President Donald Trump told the co-hosts of “Fox and Friends” that House Democrats had tried to include “crazy” proposals in the $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package that passed last week, including measures aimed at easing the voting process for Americans during the coronavirus outbreak.

“They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said.

“They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks and they had things that were just totally crazy,” he continued.

Those proposals, which were opposed by Republicans, included billions in funding for states to be able to carry out mail-in voting systems as Americans are urged (and in some states, even required) to stay home to prevent further spread of the virus.

The House Democrats’ bill would have also made Election Day a national holiday while imposing a national requirement to allow 15 days of early voting.

President Trump on Monday morning became the latest in a procession of Republicans in recent years to say that making it easier for more people to vote would hurt his party politically.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump referenced proposals from Democrats in the coronavirus stimulus negotiations that would have vastly increased funding for absentee and vote-by-mail options. The final package included $400 million for the effort, which was far less than what Democrats had sought.

“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Trump didn’t expand on the thought. But he clearly linked high turnout to Republicans losing elections. The most generous reading of his comment is that he was referring to some kind of large-scale voter fraud resulting from the easier vote-by-mail options; Trump has in the past baselessly speculated about millions of fraudulent votes helping Democrats in the 2016 election. The more nefarious reading would be that allowing more people to participate in the process legally would hurt his party because there are more Democratic-leaning voters in the country.

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wins vote to rule by decree
While the new legislation remains in place, no elections can be held and Orbán's government will be able to suspend the enforcement of certain laws.

The Hungarian parliament on Monday voted by a two-thirds majority to allow the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree without a set time limit.

While the new legislation remains in place, no elections can be held and Orbán's government will be able to suspend the enforcement of certain laws. Plus, individuals who publicize what are viewed as untrue or distorted facts — and which could interfere with the protection of the public, or could alarm or agitate a large number of people — now face several years in jail...

The EPA appears to be using coronavirus to make huge concessions to polluters

Under the new directive, announced Thursday, the EPA says it does “not expect to seek penalties for violations of routine compliance monitoring, integrity testing, sampling, laboratory analysis, training, and reporting or certification obligations in situations where the EPA agrees that Covid-19 was the cause of the noncompliance.”

The rule, which will remain in place indefinitely, means factories, power plants, and other major polluters have tremendous discretion in deciding whether or not they think the coronavirus will prevent them from meeting legal requirements on air and water pollution and hazardous waste management. The EPA will not be fining companies for violating certain requirements on limiting pollution during this time.

Many experts and environmental advocates say that while case-by-case relaxation of rules for companies that are short-staffed due to the pandemic makes sense, the expansiveness of the EPA’s directive appears both unprecedented and designed to give a green light to polluters to act recklessly at a time when air quality is acutely important for public health.

Cynthia Giles, the EPA’s former head of enforcement during the Obama administration, said she was “not aware of any instance when EPA ever relinquished this fundamental authority as it does in this memo,” according to the Guardian. She described the EPA’s suspension as “an abdication of EPA’s responsibility to protect the public.”

Florida coronavirus cases are growing fast. Here’s what that means.
Experts say the epidemic in Florida is already past the point of easy containment.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Florida is doubling every three days, putting the state on a trajectory to see tens of thousands of infections in the coming weeks, a Tampa Bay Times analysis shows.

No rigorous model has been calculated for Florida to predict the disease’s spread in detail. Those usually take months to create.

But at this point, experts say the math is simple. The number of cases is already past the point of easy containment and infections are growing faster and faster, at what statisticians call an exponential rate...

Right Wing Watch
@RightWingWatch
Rodney Howard-Browne will continue to hold services because his church is the most sterile building in America, as it contains 13 machines that can instantaneously kill any virus: "If they sneeze, it shoots it down at like 100 mph. It'll neutralize it in split seconds."

"The Lord has helped us to secure our congregation. We brought in 13 machines that basically kill every virus in the place, and uh, if somebody walks through the door it's like, it kills everything on them. If they sneeze, it shoots it down at like 100 mph. It'll neutralize it in split seconds. We have the most sterile building in, I don't know, all of America."

FAKE NEWS: CBS News Uses Footage Of Italian Emergency Room To Show Conditions In New York

Rush Limbaugh: Scientists and experts are using models to take “control of all kinds” in society

Limbaugh: “We're going to be prisoners to these models, because people are going to be the experts, and they can now tinker with them however they want.”

...Now, you're going to have people tell you that Rush Limbaugh is full of it, saying that. But temperatures are not rising through the roof, sea levels are not rising, we're not losing — none of what they're projecting, the polar bear population, all of the things they've used to scare you and your kids. None of it has yet come true. And they've been predicting this stuff since the 1980s, folks, and they keep revising their projections with their models for another 20 years out, another 30 years out.

They have gotten control of economic agenda, they've gotten control of the manufacturing of automobiles. They have gotten control of all kinds, because of these models that they are using to predict doom and destruction in the climate. Now, they have been given expert status when it comes to health issues, Katie bar the door.

People need to lose jobs over this.