As it usually is in these situations, it was the simplest of questions, a potential slamdunk for an ordinary politician, hell, for an ordinary human being. But we are talking about President Donald Trump, who is a hollowed-out pumpkin filled with a slurry of toxic waste, so the most ludicrous softball questions become moments of torment and confusion because he just doesn't get how being a person works.
On Tuesday, at an event where he brayed about the small business loan program that's become a money trough for corporate pigs to feed at, Trump got a question from a reporter. "You’ve spoken about your friend who passed away," the intrepid journalist asked, tossing a soft, underhand pitch. "I was wondering if you have spoken to the families of anyone else who has lost a loved one to COVID-19. If there’s any particular stories that have affected you."
Right now, you, sitting there as a semi-normal human being, you could toss out a couple of examples about stories that affected you. Maybe you could talk about Sklyar Herbert, the 5 year-old girl in Detroit, who passed away a week before. Maybe you could mention one of the doctors or other first responders who have been taken out by the disease they were fighting. Maybe you could talk about someone else you know, like the elderly retired professor I knew who I just found out died of coronavirus. It might be emotional. But you could do it, though.
But Trump couldn't. He answered, "Well, I have — I have many people. I know many stories. I’ve spoken to three, maybe, I guess, four families unrelated to me. I did — I lost a very good friend. I also lost three other friends — two of whom I didn’t know as well, but they were friends and people I did business with, and probably almost everybody in the room did. And it’s a — it’s a bad death. It’s not a — it’s — it’s a bad thing. It grips onto some people. Now, we found out that young people do extraordinarily well." And then that was it. The brain worms then made him pivot to schools that are opening up which led him to criticize distance learning because of course he did.
We know that whenever Trump is called upon to offer some kind of sympathy for the dead and sick, he either quickly reads a rote script or he changes the subject, often to how "horrendous" or "brilliant" COVID-19 is, as if it has to be the worst illness in the history of the world because that's the only virus that can be an opponent worthy of Donald Trump.
Trump has made a big show about how he refuses to wear a mask because he's been tested and doesn't have coronavirus. At the event Tuesday, in Oval Office gatherings, neither Trump nor the people there, including Drs. Birx and Fauci, wear masks. You know that he sees wearing a mask as a sign of weakness. You know that he's demanded that no one be allowed to wear masks. No one is gonna make him look like a disease-fearing pussy. He is the uber-mensch. All others cower beneath his exceedingly healthy orange glow.
Essentially, that's his attitude towards the dead. If you get sick, you are weak and you are preventing the economy from "roaring back," so he'll order you back to work or have governors force you back so you lose your unemployment benefits. If you die, you're a loser because it makes him look bad. Here's what he managed to say yesterday: "We mourn — and I have to say this so strongly — we mourn every life tragically lost to the invisible enemy, and we’re heartened that the worst of the pain and suffering is going to be behind us." The worst is not "behind us." We're in the worst right now, with cases rising in some states, falling in others, and staying steady in the others.
The sick and the dead are inconvenient because they prevent him from gallivanting around the country and prancing like a coked-out baboon in front of his adoring, cretinous crowds. He talked about how tragic it would be to have social distancing at his rallies of the damned: "I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full. Every — every six seats are empty for every one that you have full. That wouldn’t look too good." Your fever and cough are keeping the president from having good-looking campaign events, you selfish fucks.
Note: Of course, as long as it's the poors, immigrants, prisoners, and the weak old people (not strong like his wheezing ass) that die, well, that's just thinning the herd until we get to immunity or something.
But I keep coming back to that fuckin' question. Trump admitted that he has not reached out to a single family of someone who died. He didn't take any time to ring up some widow in Alabama or Texas or Kansas, the states that he won. That's just fucked up. He can't because to do so would be to concede that the deaths mean something beyond lower approval ratings. He can't because he's incapable of exuding the kind of empathy that's necessary to come across as anything other than the popularity-driven, praise-thirsty, narcissistic monster that he is.
Instead, he pretends that 60,000 deaths are bad, but, hey, a million deaths is worse and China must be lying; he's petulantly defensive, pissed off that all these weak losers are dying and that he's supposed to pretend to care. Fuck that. Not when it's more fun to shitpost about Brian Williams or CNN.
He says the disease is going to disappear "like a miracle," except it's not. It's going to slowly peter out, the bodies stacking up, becoming to him like a wall preventing his reelection. Your death means nothing more and nothing less.
4/25/2020
Andrew Cuomo Fucks Mitch McConnell's Shit Up
It's something that doesn't get said much, but all those red states, all those states with their MAGA citizens looking down at the northeastern libtards who want immigrants but not guns, whose schools teach science and actual history, who elect Democrats, fer chrissakes, yeah, those states pretty much fucking stay in existence because of the northeast. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts are carrying your asses because of the tax revenue generated up here. You should be kissing our feet and thanking God or whatever that we live in a nation that includes our states and you're not on your own.
But it took New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to remind us of that fact this past week in another of his moments where he looked at his bucket of fucks and found it completely empty. Unprompted, Cuomo responded to Senate Majority Leader and Man Who Perpetually Looks Like a Little Boy Who Saw a Vagina for the First Time Mitch McConnell saying that the states should be able to declare bankruptcy and that any help to states during this coronavirus crisis is "a blue-state bailout." Cuomo went after that bespectacled, evil tortoise/human hybrid like a street fighter who decided to make an example out of the wannabe tough guy who pinched his girl's ass.
By name, Cuomo called out McConnell at his Thursday press briefing, saying, "Senator Mitch McConnell goes out and he says, 'Maybe the states should declare bankruptcy.' Okay. This is one of the really dumb ideas of all time." He compared the willingness to help fund airlines to the unwillingness to fund state and local governments, before threatening, "And then to suggest we’re concerned about the economy, states should declare bankruptcy. That’s how you’re going to bring this national economy back? By states declaring bankruptcy? You want to see that market fall through the cellar? Let New York state declare bankruptcy. Let Michigan declare bankruptcy. Let Illinois declare bankruptcy. Let California declare bankruptcy. You will see a collapse of this national economy. So just dumb."
Cuomo was just getting wound up when he went after McConnell's blatant, even joyous cruelty: "Vicious is saying, when Senator McConnell said, this is a 'blue state bailout,' what he’s saying is if you look at the states that have coronavirus problems, they tend to be Democratic states...So if you fund states that are suffering from the coronavirus, the Democratic states, don’t help New York state because it is a Democratic state. How ugly a thought."
He seemed to have moved on, but in the middle of answering another question, Cuomo decided he wasn't done with McConnell. It was like Cuomo had put McConnell on the ground in the filthy alley behind the bar, but that wasn't enough. Now it was time for stomping his ass: "Let me just go back to my self-proclaimed Grim Reaper, Senator McConnell, for another second. He represents the state of Kentucky. Okay? When it comes to fairness, New York state puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out. Okay? At the end of the year, we put into that federal pot $116 billion more than we take out. Okay? His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out 148 billion more than they put in. Okay? So he’s a federal legislator. He’s distributing the federal pot of money. New York puts in more money to the federal pot than it takes out. His state takes out more than it puts in. Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out. Not my state." Facts fuck shit up. Ask anyone who tries to defy facts. They will fuck your shit up every time, so much so that you just have to pretend that facts don't exist and hope no one finds out. Cuomo put it out there: red states like Kentucky are getting by only because of the blue state largesse.
Honestly, though, even more cutting was when a reporter asked Cuomo if he had been in touch with McConnell. "No," Cuomo answered. Was he planning on calling McConnell? "No," Cuomo answered and moved on. That's a "Fuck me? No, fuck you" moment.
Cuomo was sick of this shit, of all the shit, and he went at McConnell again on Friday, except this time he tossed the entire GOP in DC into the toilet. Talking about how a federal law would be needed to allow states to declare bankruptcy, Cuomo said, "It’s your suggestion, Senator McConnell. Pass the law. I dare you. And then go to the President and say, 'Sign this bill allowing states to declare bankruptcy.' You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that. Allow states to declare bankruptcy legally, because you passed the bill. It’ll be the first time in our nation’s history that that happened. I dare you to do that...if you believe what you said and you have the courage of conviction because you’re a man of your word, pass that bill, if you weren’t just playing politics." He may as well have punctuated that with "you pussy."
After reiterating that McConnell and Kentucky are "takers" while New York is a "giver" when it comes to federal funding, Cuomo showed the senator the back of his pimp hand: "We were putting money into the pot, they were taking our dollars out of the pot and now he wants to look at New York and say, 'We’re bailing you out.' You’re bailing us out? Just give me my money back, Senator. Just give me my money back." And then he ended it by mocking Trump talking about the economy coming back while McConnell blathers about bankruptcy: "Pass a bill allowing states to be bankrupt and then let’s watch how the stock market takes off at that great news about our economic resilience."
Look, let's be honest here. McConnell doesn't give single lettuce-filled shit about Cuomo or blue states or the average Kentuckian or much of anything. He just cares about making sure that he keeps power and that rich people get richer. But there's a fucking reality here in that a shit-ton of Republicans come from states that are essentially living on welfare, and they behave as if they are the fiscally-responsible ones. It's a lie that has worked repeatedly.
But we can say that it's just fuckin' thrilling in this despairing age to hear a politician speak the truth about this shit, to call out the rhetoric and lies for what they are. Can we not just enjoy for what it is, an ass-kicking?
It's also a threat in many ways. What if New York decides to explore how to hold back some of that funding if, say, Trump is reelected? What if New Jersey says, "Okay, you want us to fuckin' buy all the testing and equipment and everything for another crisis like this but you won't give us funds? Then we're gonna keep some of that extra cash you hand over to Alabama and Kentucky." You think that sounds outlandish and impossible. Motherfuckers, we are well past impossible.
McConnell seeks to divide the nation, as does Trump. Cuomo wants them to know that there is a literal price for doing it.
(Note: Usual Cuomo caveats apply. See last week.)
But it took New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to remind us of that fact this past week in another of his moments where he looked at his bucket of fucks and found it completely empty. Unprompted, Cuomo responded to Senate Majority Leader and Man Who Perpetually Looks Like a Little Boy Who Saw a Vagina for the First Time Mitch McConnell saying that the states should be able to declare bankruptcy and that any help to states during this coronavirus crisis is "a blue-state bailout." Cuomo went after that bespectacled, evil tortoise/human hybrid like a street fighter who decided to make an example out of the wannabe tough guy who pinched his girl's ass.
By name, Cuomo called out McConnell at his Thursday press briefing, saying, "Senator Mitch McConnell goes out and he says, 'Maybe the states should declare bankruptcy.' Okay. This is one of the really dumb ideas of all time." He compared the willingness to help fund airlines to the unwillingness to fund state and local governments, before threatening, "And then to suggest we’re concerned about the economy, states should declare bankruptcy. That’s how you’re going to bring this national economy back? By states declaring bankruptcy? You want to see that market fall through the cellar? Let New York state declare bankruptcy. Let Michigan declare bankruptcy. Let Illinois declare bankruptcy. Let California declare bankruptcy. You will see a collapse of this national economy. So just dumb."
Cuomo was just getting wound up when he went after McConnell's blatant, even joyous cruelty: "Vicious is saying, when Senator McConnell said, this is a 'blue state bailout,' what he’s saying is if you look at the states that have coronavirus problems, they tend to be Democratic states...So if you fund states that are suffering from the coronavirus, the Democratic states, don’t help New York state because it is a Democratic state. How ugly a thought."
He seemed to have moved on, but in the middle of answering another question, Cuomo decided he wasn't done with McConnell. It was like Cuomo had put McConnell on the ground in the filthy alley behind the bar, but that wasn't enough. Now it was time for stomping his ass: "Let me just go back to my self-proclaimed Grim Reaper, Senator McConnell, for another second. He represents the state of Kentucky. Okay? When it comes to fairness, New York state puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out. Okay? At the end of the year, we put into that federal pot $116 billion more than we take out. Okay? His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out 148 billion more than they put in. Okay? So he’s a federal legislator. He’s distributing the federal pot of money. New York puts in more money to the federal pot than it takes out. His state takes out more than it puts in. Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out. Not my state." Facts fuck shit up. Ask anyone who tries to defy facts. They will fuck your shit up every time, so much so that you just have to pretend that facts don't exist and hope no one finds out. Cuomo put it out there: red states like Kentucky are getting by only because of the blue state largesse.
Honestly, though, even more cutting was when a reporter asked Cuomo if he had been in touch with McConnell. "No," Cuomo answered. Was he planning on calling McConnell? "No," Cuomo answered and moved on. That's a "Fuck me? No, fuck you" moment.
Cuomo was sick of this shit, of all the shit, and he went at McConnell again on Friday, except this time he tossed the entire GOP in DC into the toilet. Talking about how a federal law would be needed to allow states to declare bankruptcy, Cuomo said, "It’s your suggestion, Senator McConnell. Pass the law. I dare you. And then go to the President and say, 'Sign this bill allowing states to declare bankruptcy.' You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that. Allow states to declare bankruptcy legally, because you passed the bill. It’ll be the first time in our nation’s history that that happened. I dare you to do that...if you believe what you said and you have the courage of conviction because you’re a man of your word, pass that bill, if you weren’t just playing politics." He may as well have punctuated that with "you pussy."
After reiterating that McConnell and Kentucky are "takers" while New York is a "giver" when it comes to federal funding, Cuomo showed the senator the back of his pimp hand: "We were putting money into the pot, they were taking our dollars out of the pot and now he wants to look at New York and say, 'We’re bailing you out.' You’re bailing us out? Just give me my money back, Senator. Just give me my money back." And then he ended it by mocking Trump talking about the economy coming back while McConnell blathers about bankruptcy: "Pass a bill allowing states to be bankrupt and then let’s watch how the stock market takes off at that great news about our economic resilience."
Look, let's be honest here. McConnell doesn't give single lettuce-filled shit about Cuomo or blue states or the average Kentuckian or much of anything. He just cares about making sure that he keeps power and that rich people get richer. But there's a fucking reality here in that a shit-ton of Republicans come from states that are essentially living on welfare, and they behave as if they are the fiscally-responsible ones. It's a lie that has worked repeatedly.
But we can say that it's just fuckin' thrilling in this despairing age to hear a politician speak the truth about this shit, to call out the rhetoric and lies for what they are. Can we not just enjoy for what it is, an ass-kicking?
It's also a threat in many ways. What if New York decides to explore how to hold back some of that funding if, say, Trump is reelected? What if New Jersey says, "Okay, you want us to fuckin' buy all the testing and equipment and everything for another crisis like this but you won't give us funds? Then we're gonna keep some of that extra cash you hand over to Alabama and Kentucky." You think that sounds outlandish and impossible. Motherfuckers, we are well past impossible.
McConnell seeks to divide the nation, as does Trump. Cuomo wants them to know that there is a literal price for doing it.
(Note: Usual Cuomo caveats apply. See last week.)
4/22/2020
Donald Trump Visits His Mass Graves (A Fantasia)
The helicopter landing was a bit bumpy, not bad for such a large chopper coming down on flat earth and not a landing pad, but it was enough to send President Donald Trump into a sarcastic spiel at the poor Air Force pilot who had pulled the short straw. "You call that a landing?" Trump said. "Where the hell did you learn to fly? At Bozo the Clown's school of helicoptering?" He glanced over at the Flat Stanley of a man sitting next to him, Jared Kushner, who gave a wan smile, which, in the realm of Jared facial expressions, is equivalent to being doubled over with laughter.
They had come to Hart Island, just off the Bronx, near Long Island. Trump saw a report on CNN, which he never watches, about mass graves being dug there to accommodate all the victims of COVID-19 in New York City. The President demanded that he be brought there in secret, no media, no photographers, no one to come along but his son-in-law and several Secret Service agents. He didn't want anyone to know. At first, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, tears in his eyes, stared in wonder at how moving a gesture it was and said so to Trump. Trump harumphed, "Stop being such a pussy. I wanna see those big, beautiful graves for myself. All the best leaders in history had mass graves. Your Hitlers and your Stalins and your Kims, and a few of your Chinamen, too. I've never seen one, and, lemme tell you, these look like the best mass graves anywhere."
Trump had wanted his daughter, Ivanka, to go with him, but she claimed exhaustion from her day spent making sure that her father knew what room he was in and what event he was attending, as well as dodging his pinching fingers, grabby hands, and overly-wet lips. She wanted to spend a little time watching the nanny play with her children because motherhood is so important to her. "I was too busy creating jobs," she said. Trump winked at her and said he understood. "Looks like you're up, Skinny Jared. I call him 'Skinny Jared' because he's so skinny, you know." Jared smiled wanly. Truly, it's his only expression beyond staring straight ahead wanly.
And they were off right after his daily press briefing. The whole journey, from the White House to Marine One to the smaller helicopter they took from LaGuardia Airport to Hart Island, Trump regaled Kushner and the Secret Service with a recap of the briefing. "Did you see how I called out that one bitch reporter? She thought she was so tough. I put her in her place, didn't I?" he asked more than once. "They keep saying these things are a bad thing. They aren't a bad thing. They're a good thing. Not a bad thing. Everyone tweets how much they love it when I make those Democrats crazy." It went on like that except when he asked Kushner to read him a complimentary tweet and then retweet it. "News cycle set. Reporters eating out of my hands," he said.
On the island, a golf cart pulled up to the helicopter because no one expected Trump to walk to several hundred yards to the area of the mass graves. "Should have brought some clubs," he said as they made their way across the short distance. "Could have gotten in a few drives. I'm getting rusty." Finally, they arrived at the site, a trench in the earth with wooden caskets stacked like buildings in a Queens housing project. Two rough-looking men in coveralls stood there, ready to help.
Trump stepped out of the golf cart and over to the top of the trench. "Look at that," he exclaimed. And then to the men, "Did you dig this?" They said they had helped. "Good job, fellas. Such strong, tough, tough men." He was already imagining using them in a story where they cried and called him "sir." God, he loved that. He turned back to the ditch of the dead. "Look at it. It's like a gash, a slit in the ground." The President looked at Kushner's wanly pensive face. "I'm saying it's like they made a pussy in the dirt and now they're putting bodies into it."
"It's like birth in reverse," Kushner said, striving for some kind of sense.
Trump rolled his eyes. "No, dummy. It looks like a pussy. That's pretty funny." He lumbered up and down the grave, walking with that Sasquatch gait that demonstrates that he's struggling to keep his upper body from collapsing. "I want a closer look."
The gravediggers found a ladder and they helped Trump work his way down until he was standing on top of the wooden boxes. "All of these. Because of me. Imagine," he said. And a casual viewer of this might have thought that Trump was having a moment of self-reflection. But what he was really thinking was how proud he was, how amazing it was to have that kind of control over life and death. "I act one way, people live," he said. "I act another, they die. I'm like God. Except a real one. Not that phony loser who let himself be crucified."
He gestured to the gravediggers. "You know who's in which one?"
They tentatively nodded. "There's a marker on the box."
Trump nodded. "Find me a woman. A young one. Not too young. But, you know, young." The men paused for a second at the oddness of the request. But this was the President of the United States. They figured he must have his reasons. They moved a couple of the boxes until they found one. With hammers, they pried it open. Trump looked at the corpse and recoiled. "No, no," he said. "Not some black girl. A white one. You know, pretty."
After opening three more caskets, they called Trump over. "How about her?" one of the men said through the bandana around his face. "She's 22." He stood next to the body of a young woman with long blonde hair. Trump thought that she was hot. He nodded.
"I need a moment," he said and waved them out of the grave. When he was alone, Trump unbuckled his oddly-fitting trousers and dropped them. He pulled down his still-dry diaper and tried to reach for his half-erect penis, but he could just graze it with his finger tips. Frustrated, he called out, "Jared, get your ass down here."
Kushner climbed down to see his father-in-law, grandfather to his children, and the Most Powerful Man on Earth with pants around his ankles, standing at the foot of a crappy casket with a dead woman in it. "I need some help," Trump said.
He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was. He hoped it was just that Trump had shit himself "Do you need changing? I can get--"
Trump interrupted, "Just come over here." Kushner walked over. "You know what to do."
Kushner paused, wanly, and offered, "Right...here?"
Trump, eyes on the corpse, said, "Look at her. Prime of her life. Tits to die for. And she's dead because of me." Kushner saw that Trump was attaining something close to a full erection. "It was hard to get it aroused, and it is hard to get it aroused," Trump leered, "but we got it aroused. Now do it. While I've got a chubby."
Kusher sighed, got down on one knee, and started to jerk off Trump. He knew the routine. Start gently, get rougher, then rougher, then, maybe, with any luck, he'll cum quickly. Kushner just didn't want to vomit at the smell of death around him. He was proud of what he had done with the coronavirus, but he had no need to see the results in person. Or smell them. He worked Trump's little dick, holding in his gagging.
As he was getting masturbated, Trump thought about how much power he has, he thought about how fucking hot that bitch in the coffin was, he thought about how Roy Cohn made Trump finger his prostate when the old bastard was dying, he thought about loyalty and how he learned that you prize loyalty above all else while never being loyal to anyone. "Faster," he said. "Don't get tired now." He thought about Ivanka, oh, Ivanka, and then he saw her in the coffin and that made him think about how a dead daughter would make his approval ratings soar from sympathy, yes, how could it not but then he decided that if he's going to have a dead daughter, he'd rather it be Tina or Tammy or whatever the other one was named. "Harder. Squeeze harder. You're as weak as a dog." Then he looked back at the coffin and thought about how the woman must have suffered, how she must have gasped for breath at the end, how she may have cursed his name, and, oh, god, yes, how she hated him, just like MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times and...and just... like... those... traitor... Democrats!
Trump gasped as the orgasm sputtered through his little penis and he dribbled out a tiny bit of semen. "Oh, thank you. That's a good boy, Jared. That's a good boy. Help me get dressed," he huffed and puffed, pulling an American flag from his jacket and handing it to Jared to wipe his dick off.
Making his way out of the grave, Trump saw that the gravediggers were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. "Thank you for your service to our country," he said and then nodded at the Secret Service, who shot them to death and tossed them into an open box. "Time to go home, men. We've all had a long day. And a new one tomorrow. Just think about all we can do for the American people and this beautiful nation that we love." Jared nodded wanly. The agents betrayed no emotion at all. This really wasn't the worst they had seen on this particular detail.
Then they got into the golf cart to start the journey back. There were tweets to compose and so much news coverage to catch up on and only so many hours in a day. He gleefully hummed the theme to The Apprentice as they rode away from the piles of bodies.
They had come to Hart Island, just off the Bronx, near Long Island. Trump saw a report on CNN, which he never watches, about mass graves being dug there to accommodate all the victims of COVID-19 in New York City. The President demanded that he be brought there in secret, no media, no photographers, no one to come along but his son-in-law and several Secret Service agents. He didn't want anyone to know. At first, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, tears in his eyes, stared in wonder at how moving a gesture it was and said so to Trump. Trump harumphed, "Stop being such a pussy. I wanna see those big, beautiful graves for myself. All the best leaders in history had mass graves. Your Hitlers and your Stalins and your Kims, and a few of your Chinamen, too. I've never seen one, and, lemme tell you, these look like the best mass graves anywhere."
Trump had wanted his daughter, Ivanka, to go with him, but she claimed exhaustion from her day spent making sure that her father knew what room he was in and what event he was attending, as well as dodging his pinching fingers, grabby hands, and overly-wet lips. She wanted to spend a little time watching the nanny play with her children because motherhood is so important to her. "I was too busy creating jobs," she said. Trump winked at her and said he understood. "Looks like you're up, Skinny Jared. I call him 'Skinny Jared' because he's so skinny, you know." Jared smiled wanly. Truly, it's his only expression beyond staring straight ahead wanly.
And they were off right after his daily press briefing. The whole journey, from the White House to Marine One to the smaller helicopter they took from LaGuardia Airport to Hart Island, Trump regaled Kushner and the Secret Service with a recap of the briefing. "Did you see how I called out that one bitch reporter? She thought she was so tough. I put her in her place, didn't I?" he asked more than once. "They keep saying these things are a bad thing. They aren't a bad thing. They're a good thing. Not a bad thing. Everyone tweets how much they love it when I make those Democrats crazy." It went on like that except when he asked Kushner to read him a complimentary tweet and then retweet it. "News cycle set. Reporters eating out of my hands," he said.
On the island, a golf cart pulled up to the helicopter because no one expected Trump to walk to several hundred yards to the area of the mass graves. "Should have brought some clubs," he said as they made their way across the short distance. "Could have gotten in a few drives. I'm getting rusty." Finally, they arrived at the site, a trench in the earth with wooden caskets stacked like buildings in a Queens housing project. Two rough-looking men in coveralls stood there, ready to help.
Trump stepped out of the golf cart and over to the top of the trench. "Look at that," he exclaimed. And then to the men, "Did you dig this?" They said they had helped. "Good job, fellas. Such strong, tough, tough men." He was already imagining using them in a story where they cried and called him "sir." God, he loved that. He turned back to the ditch of the dead. "Look at it. It's like a gash, a slit in the ground." The President looked at Kushner's wanly pensive face. "I'm saying it's like they made a pussy in the dirt and now they're putting bodies into it."
"It's like birth in reverse," Kushner said, striving for some kind of sense.
Trump rolled his eyes. "No, dummy. It looks like a pussy. That's pretty funny." He lumbered up and down the grave, walking with that Sasquatch gait that demonstrates that he's struggling to keep his upper body from collapsing. "I want a closer look."
The gravediggers found a ladder and they helped Trump work his way down until he was standing on top of the wooden boxes. "All of these. Because of me. Imagine," he said. And a casual viewer of this might have thought that Trump was having a moment of self-reflection. But what he was really thinking was how proud he was, how amazing it was to have that kind of control over life and death. "I act one way, people live," he said. "I act another, they die. I'm like God. Except a real one. Not that phony loser who let himself be crucified."
He gestured to the gravediggers. "You know who's in which one?"
They tentatively nodded. "There's a marker on the box."
Trump nodded. "Find me a woman. A young one. Not too young. But, you know, young." The men paused for a second at the oddness of the request. But this was the President of the United States. They figured he must have his reasons. They moved a couple of the boxes until they found one. With hammers, they pried it open. Trump looked at the corpse and recoiled. "No, no," he said. "Not some black girl. A white one. You know, pretty."
After opening three more caskets, they called Trump over. "How about her?" one of the men said through the bandana around his face. "She's 22." He stood next to the body of a young woman with long blonde hair. Trump thought that she was hot. He nodded.
"I need a moment," he said and waved them out of the grave. When he was alone, Trump unbuckled his oddly-fitting trousers and dropped them. He pulled down his still-dry diaper and tried to reach for his half-erect penis, but he could just graze it with his finger tips. Frustrated, he called out, "Jared, get your ass down here."
Kushner climbed down to see his father-in-law, grandfather to his children, and the Most Powerful Man on Earth with pants around his ankles, standing at the foot of a crappy casket with a dead woman in it. "I need some help," Trump said.
He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was. He hoped it was just that Trump had shit himself "Do you need changing? I can get--"
Trump interrupted, "Just come over here." Kushner walked over. "You know what to do."
Kushner paused, wanly, and offered, "Right...here?"
Trump, eyes on the corpse, said, "Look at her. Prime of her life. Tits to die for. And she's dead because of me." Kushner saw that Trump was attaining something close to a full erection. "It was hard to get it aroused, and it is hard to get it aroused," Trump leered, "but we got it aroused. Now do it. While I've got a chubby."
Kusher sighed, got down on one knee, and started to jerk off Trump. He knew the routine. Start gently, get rougher, then rougher, then, maybe, with any luck, he'll cum quickly. Kushner just didn't want to vomit at the smell of death around him. He was proud of what he had done with the coronavirus, but he had no need to see the results in person. Or smell them. He worked Trump's little dick, holding in his gagging.
As he was getting masturbated, Trump thought about how much power he has, he thought about how fucking hot that bitch in the coffin was, he thought about how Roy Cohn made Trump finger his prostate when the old bastard was dying, he thought about loyalty and how he learned that you prize loyalty above all else while never being loyal to anyone. "Faster," he said. "Don't get tired now." He thought about Ivanka, oh, Ivanka, and then he saw her in the coffin and that made him think about how a dead daughter would make his approval ratings soar from sympathy, yes, how could it not but then he decided that if he's going to have a dead daughter, he'd rather it be Tina or Tammy or whatever the other one was named. "Harder. Squeeze harder. You're as weak as a dog." Then he looked back at the coffin and thought about how the woman must have suffered, how she must have gasped for breath at the end, how she may have cursed his name, and, oh, god, yes, how she hated him, just like MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times and...and just... like... those... traitor... Democrats!
Trump gasped as the orgasm sputtered through his little penis and he dribbled out a tiny bit of semen. "Oh, thank you. That's a good boy, Jared. That's a good boy. Help me get dressed," he huffed and puffed, pulling an American flag from his jacket and handing it to Jared to wipe his dick off.
Making his way out of the grave, Trump saw that the gravediggers were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. "Thank you for your service to our country," he said and then nodded at the Secret Service, who shot them to death and tossed them into an open box. "Time to go home, men. We've all had a long day. And a new one tomorrow. Just think about all we can do for the American people and this beautiful nation that we love." Jared nodded wanly. The agents betrayed no emotion at all. This really wasn't the worst they had seen on this particular detail.
Then they got into the golf cart to start the journey back. There were tweets to compose and so much news coverage to catch up on and only so many hours in a day. He gleefully hummed the theme to The Apprentice as they rode away from the piles of bodies.
4/18/2020
Andrew Cuomo Finally Gets Rid of His Last Fuck
(Note: Before I get all slobbery on Andrew Cuomo's knob, lemme preface this by saying I agree with all the things you dislike about him. I've got lots of grievances, too, since I fuckin' work for the state of New York. This ain't about any of that. Are we good? Yeah, shut up. I don't really care. Here we go.)
You gotta give New York Governor Andrew Cuomo credit. For weeks now, he has pretty much held his fire when it came to the vast amounts of fuckery being done during this COVID-19 pandemic by Donald Trump and the federal government he has deformed to fit his grotesque image. For the most part, he has thanked the president for various kinds of assistance, and he has avoided going after Trump by name or even office. Indeed, the few times that he has criticized the federal government's response to the crisis, they have been mild reproaches about Trump palming things off on the states that DC should be taking care of. Still, even those exceedingly light comments would draw the typically snide tweets or comments from Trump. But Cuomo insisted he was staying above the fray.
Until yesterday, that is.
See, in the middle of his daily press briefing, a reporter informed Cuomo that Trump had tweeted an attack on the governor, accusing Cuomo of not doing enough, insisting that he had been extra generous with New York, and saying that Cuomo needs to thank people more.
That was the moment you could actually see Andrew Cuomo toss his last fuck in the garbage. Without missing a beat, he said, "Good. Good. Let’s respond to the president." And then he went for over 9 minutes with a calm, fact-filled, skillful, coherent answer that was the equivalent of ripping out Trump's spine and beating him with it as the orange blob sank to the ground.
In answer to Trump accusing Cuomo and other governors of asking for too much, Cuomo stated plainly that they were using the estimates of deaths and hospitalizations given to them by the "CDC, Coronavirus White House Task Force," adding, "that’s you. White House. That’s you. We relied on your projections." Then he eviscerated Trump on his refusal to help the states with testing like a skilled murderer with a razor-sharp stiletto. That was followed by Cuomo giving Trump a lesson in history and the Constitution when it comes to the powers that rest with the states:
"'Well, it’s up to the states to do reopen.' By the way, it was always up to the states. What, are you going to grant me what the Constitution gave me before you were born? It’s called the 10th Amendment. [Note: I love how Cuomo phrased that in a way that mocks Trump saying, "It's called Article II"] I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me that I’m governor. I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me the powers of a state...People did that. Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They are the ones who gave me the power and I don’t need the President of the United States to read the constitution for me. Maybe he should have read the constitution before he said he had the power to open the states."
Then Cuomo mocked Trump on not even listening to his own projections when it came to the national stockpile before my favorite moment. It was when he went right at Trump's hoggish vanity: "So, thank you again Mr. President for the Javits. Thank you for the US Navy ship Comfort, which by the way, it’s just doing your job as president. It’s not really thank you like you wrote a check yourself, but thank you for that." Goddamn, that was pretty much the moment that I jizzed my jeans because Cuomo is dead-on right there. Trump always wants to thanked for doing shit that's just his fuckin' job.
He's like the student who asks if he can get extra credit because he showed up in class. No, motherfucker, you did the bare fuckin' minimum.
Cuomo was asked if he had talked to Trump about the president's desire to "reopen" the country on May 1st, and that led Cuomo to another 6 minute calm, direct tirade about how much of a bullshit fake leader Trump is. Before restating that what the states need from the government is help with testing and personal protection equipment for hospitals, the governor went again for Trump's narcissistic jugular, saying, "All he’s doing is walking in front of the parade, but he has nothing to do with the timing of the parade, right? The governors are going to open when they think they should open."
And just read this part of Cuomo's purging of everything he's obviously been wanting to say to our bloated garbage bag of a president: "How many times do you want me to say thank you? But I’m saying thank you for doing your job. This was your role as president, okay? So that’s the honest statement of fact, without politics, I’m not running for anything, I have no agenda but delivering for the people of this state and without ego. You want me to say thank you. Thank you for doing your job in helping build Javits and sending the US Navy Ship Comfort. Thank you for participating in a modicum of federal responsibility in a national crisis. Which you know is a national crisis because he declared a federal emergency. So, thank you for having the federal government participate in a federal emergency."
Holy shit, that's beautiful. Lemme say that again: Holy shit, that's so fuckin' beautiful. Because, believe it or not, a virus doesn't give a shit about state lines. So maybe you need a federal government to fuckin' coordinate a response and resources to stop it all over the country.
Read the whole thing. It starts at around the one-hour mark in the transcript. And keep reading. Read how he says Trump should fire his own people if he thinks they got things so wrong. Read him saying that the states desperately need funding. And read this:
"Our only mistake was then believing your numbers and believing your projections. If that was a mistake, then I’m guilty. But, I thought New York State, relying on what you said would have been a safe assumption. I won’t make that mistake again."
This was the cathartic moment some of us have been waiting for from Cuomo, the moment when the lie of comity was cast aside and the complete and utter contempt and disgust real leaders have with this feckless fuck of a president was finally articulated.
Cuomo is acting like there are lives at stake. Trump is acting like this whole thing is an inconvenience to holding another rally before going golfing.
You gotta give New York Governor Andrew Cuomo credit. For weeks now, he has pretty much held his fire when it came to the vast amounts of fuckery being done during this COVID-19 pandemic by Donald Trump and the federal government he has deformed to fit his grotesque image. For the most part, he has thanked the president for various kinds of assistance, and he has avoided going after Trump by name or even office. Indeed, the few times that he has criticized the federal government's response to the crisis, they have been mild reproaches about Trump palming things off on the states that DC should be taking care of. Still, even those exceedingly light comments would draw the typically snide tweets or comments from Trump. But Cuomo insisted he was staying above the fray.
Until yesterday, that is.
See, in the middle of his daily press briefing, a reporter informed Cuomo that Trump had tweeted an attack on the governor, accusing Cuomo of not doing enough, insisting that he had been extra generous with New York, and saying that Cuomo needs to thank people more.
That was the moment you could actually see Andrew Cuomo toss his last fuck in the garbage. Without missing a beat, he said, "Good. Good. Let’s respond to the president." And then he went for over 9 minutes with a calm, fact-filled, skillful, coherent answer that was the equivalent of ripping out Trump's spine and beating him with it as the orange blob sank to the ground.
In answer to Trump accusing Cuomo and other governors of asking for too much, Cuomo stated plainly that they were using the estimates of deaths and hospitalizations given to them by the "CDC, Coronavirus White House Task Force," adding, "that’s you. White House. That’s you. We relied on your projections." Then he eviscerated Trump on his refusal to help the states with testing like a skilled murderer with a razor-sharp stiletto. That was followed by Cuomo giving Trump a lesson in history and the Constitution when it comes to the powers that rest with the states:
"'Well, it’s up to the states to do reopen.' By the way, it was always up to the states. What, are you going to grant me what the Constitution gave me before you were born? It’s called the 10th Amendment. [Note: I love how Cuomo phrased that in a way that mocks Trump saying, "It's called Article II"] I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me that I’m governor. I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me the powers of a state...People did that. Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They are the ones who gave me the power and I don’t need the President of the United States to read the constitution for me. Maybe he should have read the constitution before he said he had the power to open the states."
Then Cuomo mocked Trump on not even listening to his own projections when it came to the national stockpile before my favorite moment. It was when he went right at Trump's hoggish vanity: "So, thank you again Mr. President for the Javits. Thank you for the US Navy ship Comfort, which by the way, it’s just doing your job as president. It’s not really thank you like you wrote a check yourself, but thank you for that." Goddamn, that was pretty much the moment that I jizzed my jeans because Cuomo is dead-on right there. Trump always wants to thanked for doing shit that's just his fuckin' job.
He's like the student who asks if he can get extra credit because he showed up in class. No, motherfucker, you did the bare fuckin' minimum.
Cuomo was asked if he had talked to Trump about the president's desire to "reopen" the country on May 1st, and that led Cuomo to another 6 minute calm, direct tirade about how much of a bullshit fake leader Trump is. Before restating that what the states need from the government is help with testing and personal protection equipment for hospitals, the governor went again for Trump's narcissistic jugular, saying, "All he’s doing is walking in front of the parade, but he has nothing to do with the timing of the parade, right? The governors are going to open when they think they should open."
And just read this part of Cuomo's purging of everything he's obviously been wanting to say to our bloated garbage bag of a president: "How many times do you want me to say thank you? But I’m saying thank you for doing your job. This was your role as president, okay? So that’s the honest statement of fact, without politics, I’m not running for anything, I have no agenda but delivering for the people of this state and without ego. You want me to say thank you. Thank you for doing your job in helping build Javits and sending the US Navy Ship Comfort. Thank you for participating in a modicum of federal responsibility in a national crisis. Which you know is a national crisis because he declared a federal emergency. So, thank you for having the federal government participate in a federal emergency."
Holy shit, that's beautiful. Lemme say that again: Holy shit, that's so fuckin' beautiful. Because, believe it or not, a virus doesn't give a shit about state lines. So maybe you need a federal government to fuckin' coordinate a response and resources to stop it all over the country.
Read the whole thing. It starts at around the one-hour mark in the transcript. And keep reading. Read how he says Trump should fire his own people if he thinks they got things so wrong. Read him saying that the states desperately need funding. And read this:
"Our only mistake was then believing your numbers and believing your projections. If that was a mistake, then I’m guilty. But, I thought New York State, relying on what you said would have been a safe assumption. I won’t make that mistake again."
This was the cathartic moment some of us have been waiting for from Cuomo, the moment when the lie of comity was cast aside and the complete and utter contempt and disgust real leaders have with this feckless fuck of a president was finally articulated.
Cuomo is acting like there are lives at stake. Trump is acting like this whole thing is an inconvenience to holding another rally before going golfing.
4/15/2020
The Divine Right of Trumps
Something Donald Trump said last week has just stuck in my craw. Well, to be fair, every goddamn word out of that shit-ogre's mouth sticks in my craw. My craw is fuckin' full. But this is a little snippet that got no attention whatsoever, but just seems to me to indicate exactly how perverse this entire depressing situation has always been.
Last Tuesday, on April 7, prior to jacking off for the media at his Coronavirus Task Force presser, Trump held the "Small Business Relief Update Meeting," another session where he gets his balls massaged by having everyone tell him how awesome his awesomeness is. In his introductory remarks, prior to lying again about the number of jobs his daughter/genetic spank bank Ivanka has created, Trump said this: "My daughter, Ivanka Trump, who just wants to have people working. That’s what — I gave her lots of options, and - 'What do you like?'" And then he went on to lie-brag, "She started off with a goal of 500,000 jobs, and now she’s up to over 15 million."
Look at what he's admitting there. The motherfuckin' president of the United States, who is elected and doesn't inherit the position, said that he asked his daughter, "What do you want to do in my administration?" Not what was she qualified for. And, honestly, all she's qualified to do is be the mascot for a company of cheap knock-offs of other designers' work and putting her stupid name it. A person with any self-awareness would have said, "Oh, that's okay. I'm just gonna keep on abusing sweatshop workers." But, no, in this telling, Ivanka said, "Daddy, I wish to work on getting Americans jobs." It's not just that the whole story is a lie (really, Ivanka's there to make sure Donald doesn't shit himself and keel over). It's that the lie is disturbing as fuck: The president let his daughter choose her job in the White House, like a toy at FAO Schwarz.
It's of a piece of Trump believing himself the equal to a king, the imperial presidency on Adderall, snorted off his daughter's tits.
Back in the quaint times of the Mueller investigation, when Trump was just a filthy traitor selling out the nation to Russia and not outright murdering Americans, he used to say repeatedly that he had the power to do all the treason he wanted: "Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that," he said at some godforsaken conservative conference of the damned. Of course, he talked about it all the fuckin' time.
And now, over the last few days, Trump has gone even further, asserting that he has the power to decide when individual states are ready to open up for business post-pandemic. On Monday, he asserted, "When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be." And, as he does when he knows he's fucking wrong, he insisted that others knew what he was saying. Usually, it's "you know what I'm talking about," but here it was "And the governors know that." Except the governors don't "know" that because it's just not fucking true. I just wanted one governor to say, "Motherfucker, you were too much of a pussy to close anything. Don't fuckin' get in my face about when to open it, you anus-lipped, jiggly-jowled prick."
At today's pressturbation session, he didn't just say that he has control over the economies of individual states. He said that he can use his emergency powers to adjourn the Congress so he can recess appoint a bunch of harmful fucks to positions of power. You know, so they can ensure that government for Trump and by Trump continues unabated. He went full batshit: "If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do. It's a scam." By the way, that "scam" was used to prevent President Obama from recess-appointing anyone.
What was pissing off Trump so much that he needs to provoke another constitutional crisis? The Voice of America news outlet, funded by taxpayers, wasn't sucking his dick. Yeah, VOA reported China's number of coronavirus deaths, and because they didn't say, "Oh, and China eats shit," Trump and Trumpinistas are losing their goddamn minds. Trump wants to put in his own propagandist at the VOA. The VOA asserted independence and freedoms, like press and speech, and that was the greatest sin you can commit when you are dealing with a king.
The pathetic reality is that Trump doesn't have the power of a king (yet) is that he can't make the truth go away. Oh, sure, the fucking idiot hordes, who will suckle at his saggy teats until it kills them, will believe his story.
But the real truth is that Trump had the power to do something to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic and he didn't. He could have waved his hand (in the form of a signature or two) and unleashed the manufacturing power of the United States. He could have coordinated national social distancing early on. He could have taken the WHO's tests and vastly expanded our ability to do them. He had that power: the power to have saved thousands of lives. It was in his tiny hands. And he didn't use it because he couldn't see past his own bloated reflection. How fucking sad is that.
What we're really seeing is the flailing of a pitiful failure, a sad old man screaming at the TV for disagreeing with him. He's going to keep saying this kind of shit and the threat is that he really acts on this. Because then it will once again be up to Republicans to join Democrats in reining in his desire to reign. And if they don't, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide. And we know how that goes.
It's not even a surprise anymore when Trump escalates to cover up his incompetence and bad decisions. He's like every terrorist: he gets off on seeing shit blow up.
Last Tuesday, on April 7, prior to jacking off for the media at his Coronavirus Task Force presser, Trump held the "Small Business Relief Update Meeting," another session where he gets his balls massaged by having everyone tell him how awesome his awesomeness is. In his introductory remarks, prior to lying again about the number of jobs his daughter/genetic spank bank Ivanka has created, Trump said this: "My daughter, Ivanka Trump, who just wants to have people working. That’s what — I gave her lots of options, and - 'What do you like?'" And then he went on to lie-brag, "She started off with a goal of 500,000 jobs, and now she’s up to over 15 million."
Look at what he's admitting there. The motherfuckin' president of the United States, who is elected and doesn't inherit the position, said that he asked his daughter, "What do you want to do in my administration?" Not what was she qualified for. And, honestly, all she's qualified to do is be the mascot for a company of cheap knock-offs of other designers' work and putting her stupid name it. A person with any self-awareness would have said, "Oh, that's okay. I'm just gonna keep on abusing sweatshop workers." But, no, in this telling, Ivanka said, "Daddy, I wish to work on getting Americans jobs." It's not just that the whole story is a lie (really, Ivanka's there to make sure Donald doesn't shit himself and keel over). It's that the lie is disturbing as fuck: The president let his daughter choose her job in the White House, like a toy at FAO Schwarz.
It's of a piece of Trump believing himself the equal to a king, the imperial presidency on Adderall, snorted off his daughter's tits.
Back in the quaint times of the Mueller investigation, when Trump was just a filthy traitor selling out the nation to Russia and not outright murdering Americans, he used to say repeatedly that he had the power to do all the treason he wanted: "Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that," he said at some godforsaken conservative conference of the damned. Of course, he talked about it all the fuckin' time.
And now, over the last few days, Trump has gone even further, asserting that he has the power to decide when individual states are ready to open up for business post-pandemic. On Monday, he asserted, "When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be." And, as he does when he knows he's fucking wrong, he insisted that others knew what he was saying. Usually, it's "you know what I'm talking about," but here it was "And the governors know that." Except the governors don't "know" that because it's just not fucking true. I just wanted one governor to say, "Motherfucker, you were too much of a pussy to close anything. Don't fuckin' get in my face about when to open it, you anus-lipped, jiggly-jowled prick."
At today's pressturbation session, he didn't just say that he has control over the economies of individual states. He said that he can use his emergency powers to adjourn the Congress so he can recess appoint a bunch of harmful fucks to positions of power. You know, so they can ensure that government for Trump and by Trump continues unabated. He went full batshit: "If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do. It's a scam." By the way, that "scam" was used to prevent President Obama from recess-appointing anyone.
What was pissing off Trump so much that he needs to provoke another constitutional crisis? The Voice of America news outlet, funded by taxpayers, wasn't sucking his dick. Yeah, VOA reported China's number of coronavirus deaths, and because they didn't say, "Oh, and China eats shit," Trump and Trumpinistas are losing their goddamn minds. Trump wants to put in his own propagandist at the VOA. The VOA asserted independence and freedoms, like press and speech, and that was the greatest sin you can commit when you are dealing with a king.
The pathetic reality is that Trump doesn't have the power of a king (yet) is that he can't make the truth go away. Oh, sure, the fucking idiot hordes, who will suckle at his saggy teats until it kills them, will believe his story.
But the real truth is that Trump had the power to do something to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic and he didn't. He could have waved his hand (in the form of a signature or two) and unleashed the manufacturing power of the United States. He could have coordinated national social distancing early on. He could have taken the WHO's tests and vastly expanded our ability to do them. He had that power: the power to have saved thousands of lives. It was in his tiny hands. And he didn't use it because he couldn't see past his own bloated reflection. How fucking sad is that.
What we're really seeing is the flailing of a pitiful failure, a sad old man screaming at the TV for disagreeing with him. He's going to keep saying this kind of shit and the threat is that he really acts on this. Because then it will once again be up to Republicans to join Democrats in reining in his desire to reign. And if they don't, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide. And we know how that goes.
It's not even a surprise anymore when Trump escalates to cover up his incompetence and bad decisions. He's like every terrorist: he gets off on seeing shit blow up.
4/10/2020
Trump Stupidly Self-Owns on Pandemic Deaths
Ever since the first death from COVID-19, President Donald Trump has brayed like a howler monkey getting a tree branch stuck up its ass about how allegedly terrible President Obama handled the H1N1 outbreak in 2009-10. On a daily basis, we have heard about how the incompetent fuck-ups in the Obama administration personally went out and murdered, depending on the day, between 12,000 and 18,000 people with the swine flu. (The 12,000 is roughly the number the CDC came up with; the 18,000 is the upper estimate of U.S. deaths from H1N1.)
On March 5, Trump tweeted, "Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation. The April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S., was poorly handled." Watch what happens with that number as the weeks go on.
On March 12, he decided to make it as political as possible, tweeting, "Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record." For the record, Joe Biden was not in charge of the response to the swine flu.
Praising himself (as he has done over 100 times on the coronavirus response) on March 13, Trump said, "Interestingly, if you go back — please — if you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn’t do testing like this. And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people. And they didn’t do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late." Reminded that the Obama administration had tested over a million people by the same point during the H1N1 crisis, Trump retorted pissily, "Ask them how they did with the swine flu. It was a disaster."
On March 17, Trump once again offered a middle finger to the previous administration: "If you look at swine flu — the whole thing in, I guess it was 2009, and what they did and the mistakes they’ve made, they were terrible. They were horrific mistakes. Seventeen thousand people died. And I’ll be honest, they shouldn’t be criticizing because we’ve done a fantastic job."
This very week, on April 7, he seemed to sense what was coming and moved the goal posts: "Take a look at the swine flu. Right? That’s H1N1. Take a look at that. And it’s not the other way around, by the way. It’s H1N1. Take a look — you know what I mean by that. Take a look at the swine flu. It was a disaster; 17,000 people died. The other administra- — they didn’t even know — it was like they didn’t even know it was here. And that was peanuts compared to what we have, in terms of the power, the magnitude of what we’re going through. This is attacking 182 countries, simultaneously." For the record, according to the CDC, 214 countries had H1N1 cases simultaneously.
Still, even as he hiked the death stat, from 13k to 14k to 17k now, it's like Trump understood that the metric he had been using as an indicator of the "disaster" of Obama's response was about to be lapped by COVID-19.
And guess what, motherfucker? Today, the number of deaths in the United States has topped 18,000, the upper number in the estimates of H1N1 deaths. That's a goddamn self-own right there, bitch. If this cockzit had any shame at all, he'd be out there flogging himself, weeping and blubbering, "I'm the disaster. I'm the debacle. I'm the mistake. I'm the worst." But he won't.
And fuckin' no one will hold him to account for his constant slanderous debasement of the Obama record. In a just world, Barack Obama would get to punch Trump in the dick every time the bloated tangerine of hate talked shit. But, no, no, we have to pretend to be dignified when dick-punching would be more appropriate.
This is the shit that Trump's been allowed to skate on. He repeats a lie so fucking often that it's the only thing even semi-rational people believe. Like the one that's gotten in my craw and plunged in its nails. Trump says over and over that he "shut down" travel from China early in the coronavirus outbreak. He says he "closed the border" and shit like that. Except he fucking well didn't. Read his own fuckin' proclamation on it. It applied to "all aliens who were physically present within the People’s Republic of China...during the 14-day period preceding their entry." And there were a shit-ton of exceptions, including Americans and people with green cards, spouses and children of Americans and people with green cards, and many other categories. It's like saying, "I've decided to be celibate. I'm not gonna do anal anymore, but blow jobs and firm handies are always welcome." And when those 40,000 or so exceptions to the ban came back into the U.S. from China, they faced almost no health checks.
On top of the general lie about the "ban," the date it started, which was on February 2 in the U.S., was two weeks after the first confirmed case in Washington state. The fucking virus was already here. So the sieve of a shutdown of Chinese travel had virtually no effect, despite Trump constantly saying that he himself saved "millions of lives." No, that was the social distancing and hospitalizations. Oh, and one more thing: Trump didn't issue the "ban" until the day after the WHO declared COVID-19 an international health emergency. That's right. Mr. Blame-the-WHO took his cues from the organization.
Look, this motherfucker, this loser of a president, this despicable, soul-free, degraded carcass of something that appears human, he's trying to spin shit every which way so that he escapes blame, again, for something that is his and solely his responsibility. He'll blame the WHO, Democrats and impeachment, governors, Obama, fuck, I'm sure Hillary will get in there at some point.
But it should never take away from the truth: He failed. He is failing. He is a failure. He will be a failure. He needs to wear his failure like a hair shirt for the rest of his miserable and hopefully imprisoned life. If Trump can slip away from any kind of comeuppance for this murderous ruin and wreckage, this country is even more fucked than it seems.
4/08/2020
Random Observations on the End of the Democratic Primaries
1. I gotta be honest with you. I never really got over Elizabeth Warren's drubbing once voting started. She was, to these weary eyes and ears, clearly the best fucking candidate in the field, intellectually head and shoulders above everyone else, with an understanding of how to take apart an opponent and how to make a deal and when those things are appropriate. Yeah, I'm still pissed off that I never got to vote for her. And I'm pissed that I didn't get to vote for Bernie Sanders this time, as I did in 2016, now that Sanders has suspended his campaign. But Warren got a raw ass deal from the media, which erased her repeatedly after her brief momentum slowed. However...
2. My causes, the things I have been fighting for over the decades like universal health care, civil rights for people who have been traditionally oppressed, environmentalism and climate change (seriously, I wrote a letter to Gerald Ford asking him to make recycling into national policy when I was like 8), and so much more, that shit, all of it, do not fade when my preferred candidate is out of the picture. Otherwise, why have beliefs if I'll allow everything I love to be further harmed because I didn't get Jesse Jackson or Jerry Brown or John Edwards ('04, not '08) or Elizabeth Warren or, you know, Bernie Sanders? That's not how it works. Most of the time, you hit the bar and you end up heading home not with Mr. Perfect, but with Mr. Ok, Fine, but that doesn't mean the sex can't be a blast. You just gotta give up the ideal fuck for the fuck you get to have. Or you're just never gonna get laid.
3. While I supported him as Obama's veep and cheered him on for taking apart Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan at debates, I have long had issues with Joe Biden, going back to his treatment of Anita Hill (which I wrote about at the time in a college paper - I think I even made fun of his teeth). As I wrote back in December, I didn't want him to be the nominee because "Joe Biden wants to make nice with Republicans" when, really, we should want to bury them in their political graves and then dig up their corpses and piss on them. Biden was probably sixth or seventh on my list of Democrats. But none of that matters. None of it. The Democratic primary season is over. This is where we're heading, to a Biden nomination, and there is nothing you or I can do to stop it. So you may as well get your head around it. I did after Super Tuesday. It isn't fun, it isn't what I wanted, but this is the hand we've been dealt in this shitty poker game. I figure my ante is my life and the rest of pot is everyone else's lives. You can't fuckin' fold if you see it that way. I can't let the bloated bastard in the orange hat win.
3a. Yeah, the sexual assault allegations made by Tara Reade against Biden are disturbing. And they should be investigated fully. No question. In fact, while denying Reade's story, that's what Biden's campaign has said it wants reporters to do. One further thing on this, though: I have to think that Sanders and his staff weighed how legitimate Reade's claims are. I have to think they vetted the story and found it wanting. If they thought it was all valid and provable, Sanders would have been a fool to drop out. In fact, do you really think Bernie advisor and intense attack dog David Sirota would have just let that go?
4. The job of progressives now is to influence Biden as much as possible, to get progressive candidates elected to the House and Senate, to get progressive governors and state legislatures and motherfuckin' school boards into office. You wanna make all this shit happen? Then you have to build it into the political fabric of the nation, not just in the White House. Republicans spent the last forty years making everyone believe that they had to kowtow to the religious right and nutzoid conservatives. That's the narrative that runs the nation: What Republicans and the right want is American; what Democrats and the left want isn't. It's the narrative that has to be overcome every fucking time a Democrat runs for president. Bill Clinton overcame it by taking Republican issues as his own. Obama did it by sheer force of personality and then by being pretty damn good at his job (as well as running against the poisonous W. Bush legacy both times). I've written for years about how Democrats, especially ones that have any progressive inclinations, need to create a new narrative, one that says the United States is the inclusive, liberatory place we've believe it could be, even if it fails sometimes to live up that ideal. You have to get that narrative into the political DNA of the country, and the way you do that is by embedding it at the local level, as well as the national.
5. Look, I could be a dick about this (I have been and I probably will be again, but, hey, this is the mood I'm in now) and say that if you're a Sanders voter who refuses to vote for Biden, you're giving the election to Trump and all that that means, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court. Instead, let me put it another way: Trump and his administration and his voters just fucking suck. They are just fucking terrible human beings who are actively harming people in the USA, who are accelerating climate change, who are savagely anti-immigrant, who want to get rid of women's rights and LGBTQ rights and civil rights, who have no problem with the country becoming a white nationalist Christian theocracy, who love guns and hate things like food inspections, who are corporatists at a level that would make even the most craven corporate teat-sucking Democrat look like an amateur, and who hate you, like hate you for existing and hate everything you stand for and would probably like to arrest you, eject you from the country, send you to a Trump reeducation camp or worse. Don't you wanna fuck up their world? I do. Very, very badly. I want their world shattered. The way to start to do that is to get rid of Trump. That's why I will have no problem voting for Biden. It's a step away from this path of damnation. I'll do it without any hesitation. You should, too. However...
5a. If you're a Sanders voter who now says they'll vote for Trump, you never supported Sanders's causes. You're just a fucking twatcrab who gets off on seeing things fucked up. Fuck off all the way out of here.
2. My causes, the things I have been fighting for over the decades like universal health care, civil rights for people who have been traditionally oppressed, environmentalism and climate change (seriously, I wrote a letter to Gerald Ford asking him to make recycling into national policy when I was like 8), and so much more, that shit, all of it, do not fade when my preferred candidate is out of the picture. Otherwise, why have beliefs if I'll allow everything I love to be further harmed because I didn't get Jesse Jackson or Jerry Brown or John Edwards ('04, not '08) or Elizabeth Warren or, you know, Bernie Sanders? That's not how it works. Most of the time, you hit the bar and you end up heading home not with Mr. Perfect, but with Mr. Ok, Fine, but that doesn't mean the sex can't be a blast. You just gotta give up the ideal fuck for the fuck you get to have. Or you're just never gonna get laid.
3. While I supported him as Obama's veep and cheered him on for taking apart Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan at debates, I have long had issues with Joe Biden, going back to his treatment of Anita Hill (which I wrote about at the time in a college paper - I think I even made fun of his teeth). As I wrote back in December, I didn't want him to be the nominee because "Joe Biden wants to make nice with Republicans" when, really, we should want to bury them in their political graves and then dig up their corpses and piss on them. Biden was probably sixth or seventh on my list of Democrats. But none of that matters. None of it. The Democratic primary season is over. This is where we're heading, to a Biden nomination, and there is nothing you or I can do to stop it. So you may as well get your head around it. I did after Super Tuesday. It isn't fun, it isn't what I wanted, but this is the hand we've been dealt in this shitty poker game. I figure my ante is my life and the rest of pot is everyone else's lives. You can't fuckin' fold if you see it that way. I can't let the bloated bastard in the orange hat win.
3a. Yeah, the sexual assault allegations made by Tara Reade against Biden are disturbing. And they should be investigated fully. No question. In fact, while denying Reade's story, that's what Biden's campaign has said it wants reporters to do. One further thing on this, though: I have to think that Sanders and his staff weighed how legitimate Reade's claims are. I have to think they vetted the story and found it wanting. If they thought it was all valid and provable, Sanders would have been a fool to drop out. In fact, do you really think Bernie advisor and intense attack dog David Sirota would have just let that go?
4. The job of progressives now is to influence Biden as much as possible, to get progressive candidates elected to the House and Senate, to get progressive governors and state legislatures and motherfuckin' school boards into office. You wanna make all this shit happen? Then you have to build it into the political fabric of the nation, not just in the White House. Republicans spent the last forty years making everyone believe that they had to kowtow to the religious right and nutzoid conservatives. That's the narrative that runs the nation: What Republicans and the right want is American; what Democrats and the left want isn't. It's the narrative that has to be overcome every fucking time a Democrat runs for president. Bill Clinton overcame it by taking Republican issues as his own. Obama did it by sheer force of personality and then by being pretty damn good at his job (as well as running against the poisonous W. Bush legacy both times). I've written for years about how Democrats, especially ones that have any progressive inclinations, need to create a new narrative, one that says the United States is the inclusive, liberatory place we've believe it could be, even if it fails sometimes to live up that ideal. You have to get that narrative into the political DNA of the country, and the way you do that is by embedding it at the local level, as well as the national.
5. Look, I could be a dick about this (I have been and I probably will be again, but, hey, this is the mood I'm in now) and say that if you're a Sanders voter who refuses to vote for Biden, you're giving the election to Trump and all that that means, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court. Instead, let me put it another way: Trump and his administration and his voters just fucking suck. They are just fucking terrible human beings who are actively harming people in the USA, who are accelerating climate change, who are savagely anti-immigrant, who want to get rid of women's rights and LGBTQ rights and civil rights, who have no problem with the country becoming a white nationalist Christian theocracy, who love guns and hate things like food inspections, who are corporatists at a level that would make even the most craven corporate teat-sucking Democrat look like an amateur, and who hate you, like hate you for existing and hate everything you stand for and would probably like to arrest you, eject you from the country, send you to a Trump reeducation camp or worse. Don't you wanna fuck up their world? I do. Very, very badly. I want their world shattered. The way to start to do that is to get rid of Trump. That's why I will have no problem voting for Biden. It's a step away from this path of damnation. I'll do it without any hesitation. You should, too. However...
5a. If you're a Sanders voter who now says they'll vote for Trump, you never supported Sanders's causes. You're just a fucking twatcrab who gets off on seeing things fucked up. Fuck off all the way out of here.
4/03/2020
Fuck Jared Kushner
There's a certain kind of Ivy League college graduate who is just a total wad of fuck. Usually, they come from inherited wealth, are legacy admissions, and barely had to do any work the entire time they were in school because they have never had to any kind of work. I've had my run-ins with these louche fucks who believe that every word out of their inbred idiot mouths is a gold coin of wisdom and not a dingleberry of nonsense.
I'm remembering a Princeton microbiology major at an Atlanta pool hall telling me how the way I was doing archival research was wrong. I asked him if he had ever crawled around an attic at a local library, opening boxes that hadn't been opened in decades. That didn't matter, he said, because it was much easier than his work so my problems were easy to solve and I should just listen to him. It wasn't worth arguing with the cockflea, whose advice was worth a cockflea's piss. I ignored him until he tried to convince my date to leave with him and then there was a fistfight and then we got kicked out of the pool hall and when someone told me he died of a brain aneurysm a few years later, I said, "Guess his work was too hard for him."
This is a long way of saying, "Fuck Jared Kushner. Fuck him hard. Fuck him with his Harvard degree. Fuck him with every implement available to fuck him with and then invent a few more and fuck him with those."
Donald Trump's wan, soft-voiced, soft-skinned, creepy-as-fuck and evil-as-hell son-in-law, who probably describes boning Ivanka in detail for Trump, either gets tossed into whatever issue Trump is too paranoid to actually ask an expert to get involved in - Israel/Palestine peace negotiations, the opioid crisis- or, more likely, he's gotten a whim about something and thinks he can solve it. More than probably, he's figured out an angle on how to profit from it.
So when this ghost of a serial killer showed up at yesterday's daily Trump circle jerk in front of the media, it was to get tons of shit wrong, belittle people who know better than him, and actually drain whatever remained of hope in this hopeless age. By the time he was finished with his brief spiel, you could sense the coronavirus itself licking its lips at all the Americans it was going to get to kill.
Here's what Kushner said about his job on the coronavirus task force: "What the President asked is that all of the recommendations that we make be based on data." That seems like as innocuous a statement as one could make, but think about it. Were they not making recommendations based on data? What the fuck were they making recommendations based on? I think they are actually this stupid, all of them, everyone remotely fucking associated with the Trump family, all mutated by privilege and a false sense of their own intelligence and general worth as human being.
Why are we putting up with this? Why are Democrats not shrieking with outrage, "What the fuck does a shitty real estate developer know about epidemiology?" The reaction to Jared Kushner being trotted out to throw in some corporate bullshit-speak should have been for Benjamin Franklin's skeletal corpse to show up and beat him with a femur right when he said, "The President also wanted us to make sure we think outside the box." Motherfucker, we're dying here. The box is a goddamn coffin.
Kushner blathered on with cliches about "innovative solutions" and, really, "leave no stone unturned," and he turned to the real villains in the alibi the Trump administration is coming up with for its criminally-cruel abandonment of its basic duties to protect Americans: It's those motherfucking governors' fault. They're out of their league. They don't understand their jobs. He said that some governors "don’t know what’s in their state" when it comes to medical supplies and ventilators, an accusation that he offered no support for.
Then he tossed in, "What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody to be a mayor or a governor or a president, you’re trying to think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis. This is a time of crisis, and you’re seeing certain people are better managers than others." This brainless dipshit has no idea how much he was talking about his hulking, moronic father-in-law who still thinks people give a single rat fuck about his popularity.
Then he accused governors of "asking for things that they don’t necessarily need at the moment," which, no shit, bitch. That's called "planning ahead," something the Trump administration didn't fucking do at all. And Kushner said about the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies: "the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use." Or "Fuck you. Buy your own shit, blue states."
So, just to get this straight, it's up to the states to solve the problems, but if the states want materials from the National Stockpile, they shouldn't get it because that's "our stockpile." Putting aside that it sounds like Trump is hoarding shit for him and his awful family, it seems like Kushner is saying that the federal government will decide who gets it, but that would seem to require that the states have a say, except that they don't, although they are on their own. Or something.
By the way, the website for the SNS used to say, "When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency." After yesterday, it was Jared-ized to say the stockpile "is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well."
Every time it seems like Trump couldn't make things worse, he makes them worse. He has the worst, most incompetent fucknuts around. And they all believe that they are smarter and better than they are. Their failure to see what failures they all are is literally killing us now.
And fucking Jared is now in the middle of it. Jared Kushner is a pile of shit who thinks it's a man, and until someone steps on him and wipes him off their shoes, he'll always think he's more than a foul lump of excrement.
I'm remembering a Princeton microbiology major at an Atlanta pool hall telling me how the way I was doing archival research was wrong. I asked him if he had ever crawled around an attic at a local library, opening boxes that hadn't been opened in decades. That didn't matter, he said, because it was much easier than his work so my problems were easy to solve and I should just listen to him. It wasn't worth arguing with the cockflea, whose advice was worth a cockflea's piss. I ignored him until he tried to convince my date to leave with him and then there was a fistfight and then we got kicked out of the pool hall and when someone told me he died of a brain aneurysm a few years later, I said, "Guess his work was too hard for him."
This is a long way of saying, "Fuck Jared Kushner. Fuck him hard. Fuck him with his Harvard degree. Fuck him with every implement available to fuck him with and then invent a few more and fuck him with those."
Donald Trump's wan, soft-voiced, soft-skinned, creepy-as-fuck and evil-as-hell son-in-law, who probably describes boning Ivanka in detail for Trump, either gets tossed into whatever issue Trump is too paranoid to actually ask an expert to get involved in - Israel/Palestine peace negotiations, the opioid crisis- or, more likely, he's gotten a whim about something and thinks he can solve it. More than probably, he's figured out an angle on how to profit from it.
So when this ghost of a serial killer showed up at yesterday's daily Trump circle jerk in front of the media, it was to get tons of shit wrong, belittle people who know better than him, and actually drain whatever remained of hope in this hopeless age. By the time he was finished with his brief spiel, you could sense the coronavirus itself licking its lips at all the Americans it was going to get to kill.
Here's what Kushner said about his job on the coronavirus task force: "What the President asked is that all of the recommendations that we make be based on data." That seems like as innocuous a statement as one could make, but think about it. Were they not making recommendations based on data? What the fuck were they making recommendations based on? I think they are actually this stupid, all of them, everyone remotely fucking associated with the Trump family, all mutated by privilege and a false sense of their own intelligence and general worth as human being.
Why are we putting up with this? Why are Democrats not shrieking with outrage, "What the fuck does a shitty real estate developer know about epidemiology?" The reaction to Jared Kushner being trotted out to throw in some corporate bullshit-speak should have been for Benjamin Franklin's skeletal corpse to show up and beat him with a femur right when he said, "The President also wanted us to make sure we think outside the box." Motherfucker, we're dying here. The box is a goddamn coffin.
Kushner blathered on with cliches about "innovative solutions" and, really, "leave no stone unturned," and he turned to the real villains in the alibi the Trump administration is coming up with for its criminally-cruel abandonment of its basic duties to protect Americans: It's those motherfucking governors' fault. They're out of their league. They don't understand their jobs. He said that some governors "don’t know what’s in their state" when it comes to medical supplies and ventilators, an accusation that he offered no support for.
Then he tossed in, "What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody to be a mayor or a governor or a president, you’re trying to think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis. This is a time of crisis, and you’re seeing certain people are better managers than others." This brainless dipshit has no idea how much he was talking about his hulking, moronic father-in-law who still thinks people give a single rat fuck about his popularity.
Then he accused governors of "asking for things that they don’t necessarily need at the moment," which, no shit, bitch. That's called "planning ahead," something the Trump administration didn't fucking do at all. And Kushner said about the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies: "the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use." Or "Fuck you. Buy your own shit, blue states."
So, just to get this straight, it's up to the states to solve the problems, but if the states want materials from the National Stockpile, they shouldn't get it because that's "our stockpile." Putting aside that it sounds like Trump is hoarding shit for him and his awful family, it seems like Kushner is saying that the federal government will decide who gets it, but that would seem to require that the states have a say, except that they don't, although they are on their own. Or something.
By the way, the website for the SNS used to say, "When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency." After yesterday, it was Jared-ized to say the stockpile "is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well."
Every time it seems like Trump couldn't make things worse, he makes them worse. He has the worst, most incompetent fucknuts around. And they all believe that they are smarter and better than they are. Their failure to see what failures they all are is literally killing us now.
And fucking Jared is now in the middle of it. Jared Kushner is a pile of shit who thinks it's a man, and until someone steps on him and wipes him off their shoes, he'll always think he's more than a foul lump of excrement.
3/31/2020
Trump Must Resign or Be Removed from the Presidency
Something kind of extraordinary happened at Monday's White House coronavirus task force press briefing. It happened when President Donald Trump asked Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Seema Verma to say a few words. She stepped up to the microphone and said, "Let me start by saying, I want to convey my deepest sympathies to those that have lost loved ones to the coronavirus. We’re all thinking of you."
What was extraordinary was that it was the first time in at least a week, if ever, that anyone in the Trump administration recognized the families of the dead and offered any condolences. I have gone through days of briefings and Trump appearances, searching for some sign of compassion for the suffering, and this was the only example I could find.
That's right. The President of the United States has not once sent his sympathy or conveyed any emotion at all about the sick or about the families of the dead, including grieving children and grandchildren. Think about that for a moment. It could have been so simple - a couple of words at the beginning of his opening remarks at one of the more than a dozen briefings he's done. But he didn't because that shows an acknowledgement that something's wrong. It moves the deaths from the abstract numbers he tosses around and gives them meaning in flesh and blood. Or maybe he's just utterly incapable of feelings beyond rage and pride and self-pity. Sociopaths aren't noted for their ability to empathize.
Here's what Trump said on March 13, one of the earliest briefings, in a strained attempt at leadership and compassion: "To those families and citizens who are worried and concerned for themselves and their loved ones, I want you to know that your federal government will unleash every authority, resource, and tool at its disposal to safeguard the lives and health of our people."
Here's what we know as of tonight: We know that Trump has just barely put into action the Defense Production Act for coronavirus assistance, despite his administration having used it literally hundreds of thousands of times for things like lasers (really) and Border Patrol protection.
We know that Trump isn't going to allow for a special sign-up period for Obamacare coverage despite the fact that millions of Americans don't have health insurance and will have to pay for COVID-19 treatment out of pocket or not go to the hospital at all, which will prevent some sick people from getting treatment and will thus help spread the virus. We also know that several states, with the Trump administration's support, are continuing with their case to have the Supreme Court overturn the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, including its pre-existing condition coverage mandate, which means that people with longterm coronavirus effects could lose their insurance.
We know that, despite Trump's constant assurances, the medical supplies and equipment that states are begging for are not getting to the places in the greatest need. We know that Trump told governors on March 16 that they were on their own, that the federal government would not act as a middleman to get them what they needed, thus leading the states to have to bid against each other for lifesaving items like ventilators. We know that states that supported Trump in the 2016 election have received more supplies than they need while states that didn't support him have received far, far less than they need. We know that large shipments of medical supplies were being sent to other countries from the U.S., even after the states started begging for masks and gloves.
So we know that Trump didn't "unleash" much of anything until absolutely pushed into a corner to do so. We know that he flatly refused to heed the advice of anyone back in January or early February, when senators were telling the administration that their states weren't ready for a pandemic. We know that Trump didn't want to hear it because it killed the high he got from his rallies.
We know so many things since March 13, like that Trump didn't really take the death toll seriously. On March 23, a week after the Imperial College report came out predicting up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States, Trump said, "You know — and again, I say we have a very active flu season; more active than most. It’s looking like it’s heading to 50,000 or more deaths. Deaths, not cases. Fifty thousand deaths, which is — that’s a lot. And you look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody, 'No more driving of cars.'" For the record, for the last few years, the number of Americans who died in motor vehicle accidents is around 37,000. The number of people who will likely die of this single strain of coronavirus will exceed the deaths from multiple strains of influenza (which is what we mean when we say "the flu") and the number of motor vehicle deaths combined.
But Trump was playing games with numbers, again failing to acknowledge the human beings behind any of the numbers. Even today, when he finally admitted that at least 100,000 people, maybe as many as 240,000, maybe fewer, maybe more, were going to die in this country, most in the next few weeks, he painted it as a victory that he was leading because it wasn't a million, ignoring that that it could have been far, far fewer had he just acted like a president instead of preening and prancing for his followers before heading to Florida to golf and schmooze with donors and hangers-on, some of whom became infected with the virus.
While some newspapers have called out Trump as being entirely unsuited to this moment in history, of failing not only to rise to the occasion, but to drag us all down with him, they have mostly said things like, as the Boston Globe did, "Come November, there must be a reckoning for the lives lost." But we can't wait until November, or, really, January for Trump to be out of office. It must happen now. It should have happened a month ago (and, yes, it should have happened as soon as he was inaugurated, but it didn't).
While I have not previously been one of the liberals calling on the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of a president who is unfit to do the job, physically or mentally, I wholeheartedly advocate for it now, as Mehdi Hasan does in a recent piece. Trump can't do what needs to be done. Call it mental illness or some other cognitive impairment or whatever you like. He only thinks in transactional terms about what benefits him, and we don't have time for that anymore. Frankly, at this point, I'd be willing for someone to offer him and his terrible family immunity from prosecution in exchange for leaving office. Trump and his dreadful children will face an angry New York justice system when he's no longer president. Give him the "get out of jail free" card if we can save some lives now.
Pundits and politicians keep saying that they want Trump to act like we're in an emergency. Except Trump is simply too feckless, too narcissistic, and too arrogant to even pretend that it's an emergency. Even today he was talking about a "very, very painful two weeks," as if this is still going to be over in April. He hasn't faced the full force of reality because to do so would mean having to admit failure, and admitting failure means having to say he's wrong. He will not do that.
We have witnessed betrayal after betrayal, and we have heard lie after lie. We need to act like it's an emergency. We need to act like it's life and death on the line.
So he needs to be asked to leave or be removed. I know the likelihood of this is slim to none. But the idea should be out there. The calls for his resignation should be screaming from every newsroom and every media outlet. Democrats should be demanding he step down. He is not a president. At best, he is an accessory to murder. At worst, he's holding the knife and standing on a pile of bodies.
What was extraordinary was that it was the first time in at least a week, if ever, that anyone in the Trump administration recognized the families of the dead and offered any condolences. I have gone through days of briefings and Trump appearances, searching for some sign of compassion for the suffering, and this was the only example I could find.
That's right. The President of the United States has not once sent his sympathy or conveyed any emotion at all about the sick or about the families of the dead, including grieving children and grandchildren. Think about that for a moment. It could have been so simple - a couple of words at the beginning of his opening remarks at one of the more than a dozen briefings he's done. But he didn't because that shows an acknowledgement that something's wrong. It moves the deaths from the abstract numbers he tosses around and gives them meaning in flesh and blood. Or maybe he's just utterly incapable of feelings beyond rage and pride and self-pity. Sociopaths aren't noted for their ability to empathize.
Here's what Trump said on March 13, one of the earliest briefings, in a strained attempt at leadership and compassion: "To those families and citizens who are worried and concerned for themselves and their loved ones, I want you to know that your federal government will unleash every authority, resource, and tool at its disposal to safeguard the lives and health of our people."
Here's what we know as of tonight: We know that Trump has just barely put into action the Defense Production Act for coronavirus assistance, despite his administration having used it literally hundreds of thousands of times for things like lasers (really) and Border Patrol protection.
We know that Trump isn't going to allow for a special sign-up period for Obamacare coverage despite the fact that millions of Americans don't have health insurance and will have to pay for COVID-19 treatment out of pocket or not go to the hospital at all, which will prevent some sick people from getting treatment and will thus help spread the virus. We also know that several states, with the Trump administration's support, are continuing with their case to have the Supreme Court overturn the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, including its pre-existing condition coverage mandate, which means that people with longterm coronavirus effects could lose their insurance.
We know that, despite Trump's constant assurances, the medical supplies and equipment that states are begging for are not getting to the places in the greatest need. We know that Trump told governors on March 16 that they were on their own, that the federal government would not act as a middleman to get them what they needed, thus leading the states to have to bid against each other for lifesaving items like ventilators. We know that states that supported Trump in the 2016 election have received more supplies than they need while states that didn't support him have received far, far less than they need. We know that large shipments of medical supplies were being sent to other countries from the U.S., even after the states started begging for masks and gloves.
So we know that Trump didn't "unleash" much of anything until absolutely pushed into a corner to do so. We know that he flatly refused to heed the advice of anyone back in January or early February, when senators were telling the administration that their states weren't ready for a pandemic. We know that Trump didn't want to hear it because it killed the high he got from his rallies.
We know so many things since March 13, like that Trump didn't really take the death toll seriously. On March 23, a week after the Imperial College report came out predicting up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States, Trump said, "You know — and again, I say we have a very active flu season; more active than most. It’s looking like it’s heading to 50,000 or more deaths. Deaths, not cases. Fifty thousand deaths, which is — that’s a lot. And you look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody, 'No more driving of cars.'" For the record, for the last few years, the number of Americans who died in motor vehicle accidents is around 37,000. The number of people who will likely die of this single strain of coronavirus will exceed the deaths from multiple strains of influenza (which is what we mean when we say "the flu") and the number of motor vehicle deaths combined.
But Trump was playing games with numbers, again failing to acknowledge the human beings behind any of the numbers. Even today, when he finally admitted that at least 100,000 people, maybe as many as 240,000, maybe fewer, maybe more, were going to die in this country, most in the next few weeks, he painted it as a victory that he was leading because it wasn't a million, ignoring that that it could have been far, far fewer had he just acted like a president instead of preening and prancing for his followers before heading to Florida to golf and schmooze with donors and hangers-on, some of whom became infected with the virus.
While some newspapers have called out Trump as being entirely unsuited to this moment in history, of failing not only to rise to the occasion, but to drag us all down with him, they have mostly said things like, as the Boston Globe did, "Come November, there must be a reckoning for the lives lost." But we can't wait until November, or, really, January for Trump to be out of office. It must happen now. It should have happened a month ago (and, yes, it should have happened as soon as he was inaugurated, but it didn't).
While I have not previously been one of the liberals calling on the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of a president who is unfit to do the job, physically or mentally, I wholeheartedly advocate for it now, as Mehdi Hasan does in a recent piece. Trump can't do what needs to be done. Call it mental illness or some other cognitive impairment or whatever you like. He only thinks in transactional terms about what benefits him, and we don't have time for that anymore. Frankly, at this point, I'd be willing for someone to offer him and his terrible family immunity from prosecution in exchange for leaving office. Trump and his dreadful children will face an angry New York justice system when he's no longer president. Give him the "get out of jail free" card if we can save some lives now.
Pundits and politicians keep saying that they want Trump to act like we're in an emergency. Except Trump is simply too feckless, too narcissistic, and too arrogant to even pretend that it's an emergency. Even today he was talking about a "very, very painful two weeks," as if this is still going to be over in April. He hasn't faced the full force of reality because to do so would mean having to admit failure, and admitting failure means having to say he's wrong. He will not do that.
We have witnessed betrayal after betrayal, and we have heard lie after lie. We need to act like it's an emergency. We need to act like it's life and death on the line.
So he needs to be asked to leave or be removed. I know the likelihood of this is slim to none. But the idea should be out there. The calls for his resignation should be screaming from every newsroom and every media outlet. Democrats should be demanding he step down. He is not a president. At best, he is an accessory to murder. At worst, he's holding the knife and standing on a pile of bodies.
3/25/2020
Trump Doesn't Care About What You Have to Lose
It would have been so easy, so unbelievably easy, for Donald Trump to have been the hero when it came to coronavirus. He had his chance, his bullhorn on the wreckage, his "tear down this wall." And it would have been with absolutely minimal effort. With a wave of his hand, the signing of a couple of documents, and a speech to the nation, Trump could have so easily done what was needed to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 before it started its snowballing rampage. He could have quickly hired a pandemic team, as he said he could, then ramped up testing early, used the Defense Production Act to produce what's necessary if the pandemic got out of hand in the U.S., and instituted a national lockdown policy. If he had told his MAGA hordes to stay at home, they would have done it in a heartbeat and thanked him for his wisdom. Fox "news" would have extolled him for his powerful foresight. Much of the country would have looked at Italy and Spain and breathed an enormous sigh of relief that Trump had listened to the scientists and acted.
At so many points along the way to where we are now in this increasingly dire situation, Trump could have acted to mitigate the shit-twister that's about to engulf us. But he didn't. He didn't and now we're sitting here like people in the basement, hearing the horns and alarms, and watching all the idiots in our town run around and tell us it's all fine, come on out. And we're wondering when the shit-twister is gonna hit and knowing that even if it doesn't wipe out our house, it's gonna fuck up a lot of other places and leave it all covered in shit.
Instead of action, we get Trump's entire mobster ethos on steroids: threatening anyone who crosses him and lying about everything in order to make him look good. We know that Trump inflated his worth when it benefited him so he didn't seem like a broke loser to lenders. We know that Trump lied about how much his properties were worth when it came to real estate taxes. We know that Trump lied about his investment in properties that he hadn't invested in at all. We know that Trump lied about how many units were sold at developments. He lied about the quality of his fuckin' steaks. He's a fucking con man, always trying to get people to buy into the grift.
We know that. It just had always been about money until now. That it's actual life and death at stake during our COVID-19 pandemic makes his response that much more flagrantly callous. At his fucked up hate rallies, Trump is fond of saying to African Americans, "What the hell do you have to lose?" when it came to voting for him, as if electing a president ought to be a roll of the dice at a ten-cent table at a cheap casino. Now he's saying it when it comes to using drugs that aren't proven to be effective on coronavirus patients. At one of those worthless press conferences he has daily, he said about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, "Let’s see what happens. We have nothing to lose. You know the expression: What the hell do you have to lose? Okay?" Except, you know, for everything they have to lose.
Back when it was money, people could sue him and his bullshit corporation, but he could tie shit up in courts until they gave up. Now, the people affected are dead so...no lawsuits. It doesn't matter if he doesn't know anything beyond what he's seen on Fox "news" or its inbred, mutant offspring, One America News.
And when he's cornered or threatened or even contradicted, Trump has two responses: brutish denial (as in his response when asked about firing the CDC's pandemic task force) and brutish bullying. Trump sees the Treasury of the United States as his piggy bank and the agencies of the United States as his Mafia. Quid pro quo-ing like a champ, Trump said of governors who ask for help, "It’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well also. They can’t say, 'Oh gee, we should get this, we should get that.'" Why the fuck shouldn't they? Why the fuck shouldn't a governor advocate for their state? Why should they have to pleasure the king to get what they need? Motherfuckin' New York has been propping up the country for decades now, sending far more income tax money to DC than it receives in benefit. Fuckin' Alabama would be a graveyard and a parking lot without New York (and other states that give more than they get).
You know what this savage cockflea of a fake president probably thinks? Right now, most of the states with the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases are led by Democrats. That's gonna change when Texas and Florida explode and Tennessee and Georgia peak, but right now, New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Michigan, and Louisiana are where the highest numbers of cases are, all with Democratic governors. He can blame governors for now because he's just draggin' the Dems.
And look at the way he talked about the Defense Production Act: "Private companies are heeding our call to produce medical equipment and supplies because they know that we will not hesitate to invoke the DPA in order to get them to do what they have to do. It’s called leverage. You don’t have to use it from the standpoint of — actually, it’s been activated, but you don’t have to use it. But the threat of it being there is great leverage. And companies are doing as we ask...We didn’t have to exercise or utilize the DPA in any way. The fact that we have it helps, but we didn’t have to."
The DPA is not a threat. It's actually a guarantee to companies that what they produce will be purchased. It's a help, not a hindrance. And this fuckin' cut-rate Corleone is wielding it like a knife at the throat of the children of CEOs. That's why governors are confused by Trump's refusal to put the DPA into action. It's not a negative thing. And the reason is that it's more important that Trump look like a tough guy who can cajole and make deals than that he's just fuckin' following the law.
This gets us to the delusional idea that the country will be able to get back to normal on Easter. It's purely marketing. This week, Trump has been on a phone call with "religious leaders" and another with "conservative leaders." You know these fake Christian motherfuckers wanted to have a branding tool, like "America will be resurrected just like Jesus" (which means somehow they'll blame the virus on the Jews). And this also taps into Trump's usual con: his promising of something amazing - a wall built by Mexico, for instance, or an incredible health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act - that will never happen, but it convinces the dumbasses who believe in him that he's magical and mighty.
It won't matter that, come Easter, we won't be crowding into the streets to watch bonnet parades or into churches to celebrate when Jesus fucked a bunny into laying eggs or whatever happened then. And, like he did today in goddamn tweet, Trump will blame the media and the Democrats, and those same people who believe him now will believe him then. We better get used to the idea that hundreds of thousands of MAGA idiots could die from coronavirus, and the rest will still fucking love Trump.
Fuck, I hate this motherfucker.
Honestly, if I saw a grizzly bear raping Donald Trump, I'd give the bear Viagra.
At so many points along the way to where we are now in this increasingly dire situation, Trump could have acted to mitigate the shit-twister that's about to engulf us. But he didn't. He didn't and now we're sitting here like people in the basement, hearing the horns and alarms, and watching all the idiots in our town run around and tell us it's all fine, come on out. And we're wondering when the shit-twister is gonna hit and knowing that even if it doesn't wipe out our house, it's gonna fuck up a lot of other places and leave it all covered in shit.
Instead of action, we get Trump's entire mobster ethos on steroids: threatening anyone who crosses him and lying about everything in order to make him look good. We know that Trump inflated his worth when it benefited him so he didn't seem like a broke loser to lenders. We know that Trump lied about how much his properties were worth when it came to real estate taxes. We know that Trump lied about his investment in properties that he hadn't invested in at all. We know that Trump lied about how many units were sold at developments. He lied about the quality of his fuckin' steaks. He's a fucking con man, always trying to get people to buy into the grift.
We know that. It just had always been about money until now. That it's actual life and death at stake during our COVID-19 pandemic makes his response that much more flagrantly callous. At his fucked up hate rallies, Trump is fond of saying to African Americans, "What the hell do you have to lose?" when it came to voting for him, as if electing a president ought to be a roll of the dice at a ten-cent table at a cheap casino. Now he's saying it when it comes to using drugs that aren't proven to be effective on coronavirus patients. At one of those worthless press conferences he has daily, he said about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, "Let’s see what happens. We have nothing to lose. You know the expression: What the hell do you have to lose? Okay?" Except, you know, for everything they have to lose.
Back when it was money, people could sue him and his bullshit corporation, but he could tie shit up in courts until they gave up. Now, the people affected are dead so...no lawsuits. It doesn't matter if he doesn't know anything beyond what he's seen on Fox "news" or its inbred, mutant offspring, One America News.
And when he's cornered or threatened or even contradicted, Trump has two responses: brutish denial (as in his response when asked about firing the CDC's pandemic task force) and brutish bullying. Trump sees the Treasury of the United States as his piggy bank and the agencies of the United States as his Mafia. Quid pro quo-ing like a champ, Trump said of governors who ask for help, "It’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well also. They can’t say, 'Oh gee, we should get this, we should get that.'" Why the fuck shouldn't they? Why the fuck shouldn't a governor advocate for their state? Why should they have to pleasure the king to get what they need? Motherfuckin' New York has been propping up the country for decades now, sending far more income tax money to DC than it receives in benefit. Fuckin' Alabama would be a graveyard and a parking lot without New York (and other states that give more than they get).
You know what this savage cockflea of a fake president probably thinks? Right now, most of the states with the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases are led by Democrats. That's gonna change when Texas and Florida explode and Tennessee and Georgia peak, but right now, New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Michigan, and Louisiana are where the highest numbers of cases are, all with Democratic governors. He can blame governors for now because he's just draggin' the Dems.
And look at the way he talked about the Defense Production Act: "Private companies are heeding our call to produce medical equipment and supplies because they know that we will not hesitate to invoke the DPA in order to get them to do what they have to do. It’s called leverage. You don’t have to use it from the standpoint of — actually, it’s been activated, but you don’t have to use it. But the threat of it being there is great leverage. And companies are doing as we ask...We didn’t have to exercise or utilize the DPA in any way. The fact that we have it helps, but we didn’t have to."
The DPA is not a threat. It's actually a guarantee to companies that what they produce will be purchased. It's a help, not a hindrance. And this fuckin' cut-rate Corleone is wielding it like a knife at the throat of the children of CEOs. That's why governors are confused by Trump's refusal to put the DPA into action. It's not a negative thing. And the reason is that it's more important that Trump look like a tough guy who can cajole and make deals than that he's just fuckin' following the law.
This gets us to the delusional idea that the country will be able to get back to normal on Easter. It's purely marketing. This week, Trump has been on a phone call with "religious leaders" and another with "conservative leaders." You know these fake Christian motherfuckers wanted to have a branding tool, like "America will be resurrected just like Jesus" (which means somehow they'll blame the virus on the Jews). And this also taps into Trump's usual con: his promising of something amazing - a wall built by Mexico, for instance, or an incredible health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act - that will never happen, but it convinces the dumbasses who believe in him that he's magical and mighty.
It won't matter that, come Easter, we won't be crowding into the streets to watch bonnet parades or into churches to celebrate when Jesus fucked a bunny into laying eggs or whatever happened then. And, like he did today in goddamn tweet, Trump will blame the media and the Democrats, and those same people who believe him now will believe him then. We better get used to the idea that hundreds of thousands of MAGA idiots could die from coronavirus, and the rest will still fucking love Trump.
Fuck, I hate this motherfucker.
Honestly, if I saw a grizzly bear raping Donald Trump, I'd give the bear Viagra.
3/19/2020
Why It Matters That Trump Is Calling COVID-19 "the Chinese Virus"
Let's get a couple of things straight right off the bat regarding some virus names:
"Zika" and "West Nile virus" were named before 1950, when things were even more racist-y than they are now. "Ebola" got its name because scientists, including ones from the Centers for Disease Control, decided to name it for a river near the village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) where the first case was discovered. They didn't want to name it after the village because they didn't want to stigmatize the people living there.
MERS, or "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome," was named by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which has a Coronavirus Study Group and works with the World Health Organization and researchers. Originally, the name contained "SA" in it because the first reported case was in Saudi Arabia, which pissed off the Saudis (and, it turned out, the real first case was in Jordan), so it was changed.
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) got its name from the WHO because "we didn’t want the press or some other group to name it with a stigmatizing name." H1N1 is a shortened version of "A/H1N1pdm09" and, yes, it was nicknamed "swine flu" because it originated from human contact with pigs. The WHO has guidelines for how this shit is done, and now they specifically avoid animal and location names because it gives the wrong idea about the virus. "Swine flu," as you might imagine, caused people to stop eating pork because people are fucking idiots.
The coronavirus we're fighting now was given the name "COVID-19" by the WHO. It's got a damn name. But it originated in China, so, of course, conservative media started calling it the "Chinese virus." And, of course, that meant President Donald Trump, who loves racism as much as normal human beings love babies and puppies, started calling it that.
And, of course, that means that all of MAGA-world, who are loyal cumgobblers anxiously awaiting with open mouths for the next ejaculation from their orange jizz master, will repeat it and justify it and stand by it and fight for it and shout about it and insult anyone who defies them or their orange jizz master and accuse us of loving commie China, and they'll do that until we all just give up saying that it's wrong or Trump stops saying it and then says he never said it and that the media is just out to get him and the cumgobblers will tell us we're liars for saying what's on video for everyone to see. Repeat endlessly with a new load.
It's not a distraction that Trump is calling COVID-19 (which isn't that difficult to say) the "Chinese virus." On so many levels, it's significant. It gives fuel to rising anti-Asian hate crimes and attacks. It allows Trump and his assorted douches and dicks to deflect blame for the Trump administration's catastrophic fuck ups in preparing for and dealing with COVID-19 onto China. At today's petulant press conference, he said, "[I]f people would’ve known about it could have been stopped in place. It could have been stopped where it came from, China." Except, of course, that "people" did know about it for over a month before Trump took any action at all beyond closing the border to people coming from China (which Italy did before us and then they never saw COVID-19 again...oh, wait). And who the fuck is defending China? Someone ought to say to Trump, "Motherfucker, you're the one who always talks about how good you get along with President Xi. What did that get you?"
So, sure, in many ways, the whole "Chinese virus" bullshit is of a piece with Trump's refusal to accept responsibility for anything and his use of racism to keep his white troglodyte minions all hot and sweaty and ready to fuck some shit up.
But I think something else is at work here. It's also part of his anti-immigrant rhetoric, that Stephen Miller crap that has created a humanitarian nightmare at our southern border that is going to turn into a catastrophe. If you keep telling people that invaders from the outside are harming us, then you better be able to fuckin' prove that. Caravans of brown drug dealers? You fuckin' bet. Virus-ridden yellow menaces? Hell, yeah. Fuckin' stop that shit cold. Once this real and frightening crisis is over, if not before, Trump is likely going to use it to institute even more draconian policies on immigration. If you don't think that's possible, you haven't been paying attention. What better way to get his base all ready to fuck when it comes to the election in November than to tell them that they are battling to keep diseased foreigners out of our precious white America?
Coming to Trump's defense today was the white nationalist/conspiracy mongering One American News Network (motto: "Fox 'news,' but dumb") and reporter/insane person Chanel Rion. She really asked Trump, "Do you consider the term Chinese food racist?" Believe it or not, Trump doesn't think that's racist. And he's right, unless you're being a racist while saying it. Then Rion, who is oddly allowed in the same room with actual reporters, really asked, "Major left wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives, and they are claiming you are racist for making these claims about Chinese virus. Is it alarming that major media players...are consistently siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicalism, Latin gangs and cartels, and they work right here at the White House with direct access to you and your team?" Honestly, that's not a dog whistle. That's a full-fledged racist blow horn.
Trump answered, in part, "Well, I think they do. I mean, they are siding with China. They are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re siding with many others. China’s the least of it."
We'll be lucky if this doesn't end with them rounding people up and turning them into soylent green. Hell, he'll rebrand it soylent Trump: "Only the best people."
"Zika" and "West Nile virus" were named before 1950, when things were even more racist-y than they are now. "Ebola" got its name because scientists, including ones from the Centers for Disease Control, decided to name it for a river near the village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) where the first case was discovered. They didn't want to name it after the village because they didn't want to stigmatize the people living there.
MERS, or "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome," was named by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which has a Coronavirus Study Group and works with the World Health Organization and researchers. Originally, the name contained "SA" in it because the first reported case was in Saudi Arabia, which pissed off the Saudis (and, it turned out, the real first case was in Jordan), so it was changed.
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) got its name from the WHO because "we didn’t want the press or some other group to name it with a stigmatizing name." H1N1 is a shortened version of "A/H1N1pdm09" and, yes, it was nicknamed "swine flu" because it originated from human contact with pigs. The WHO has guidelines for how this shit is done, and now they specifically avoid animal and location names because it gives the wrong idea about the virus. "Swine flu," as you might imagine, caused people to stop eating pork because people are fucking idiots.
The coronavirus we're fighting now was given the name "COVID-19" by the WHO. It's got a damn name. But it originated in China, so, of course, conservative media started calling it the "Chinese virus." And, of course, that meant President Donald Trump, who loves racism as much as normal human beings love babies and puppies, started calling it that.
And, of course, that means that all of MAGA-world, who are loyal cumgobblers anxiously awaiting with open mouths for the next ejaculation from their orange jizz master, will repeat it and justify it and stand by it and fight for it and shout about it and insult anyone who defies them or their orange jizz master and accuse us of loving commie China, and they'll do that until we all just give up saying that it's wrong or Trump stops saying it and then says he never said it and that the media is just out to get him and the cumgobblers will tell us we're liars for saying what's on video for everyone to see. Repeat endlessly with a new load.
It's not a distraction that Trump is calling COVID-19 (which isn't that difficult to say) the "Chinese virus." On so many levels, it's significant. It gives fuel to rising anti-Asian hate crimes and attacks. It allows Trump and his assorted douches and dicks to deflect blame for the Trump administration's catastrophic fuck ups in preparing for and dealing with COVID-19 onto China. At today's petulant press conference, he said, "[I]f people would’ve known about it could have been stopped in place. It could have been stopped where it came from, China." Except, of course, that "people" did know about it for over a month before Trump took any action at all beyond closing the border to people coming from China (which Italy did before us and then they never saw COVID-19 again...oh, wait). And who the fuck is defending China? Someone ought to say to Trump, "Motherfucker, you're the one who always talks about how good you get along with President Xi. What did that get you?"
So, sure, in many ways, the whole "Chinese virus" bullshit is of a piece with Trump's refusal to accept responsibility for anything and his use of racism to keep his white troglodyte minions all hot and sweaty and ready to fuck some shit up.
But I think something else is at work here. It's also part of his anti-immigrant rhetoric, that Stephen Miller crap that has created a humanitarian nightmare at our southern border that is going to turn into a catastrophe. If you keep telling people that invaders from the outside are harming us, then you better be able to fuckin' prove that. Caravans of brown drug dealers? You fuckin' bet. Virus-ridden yellow menaces? Hell, yeah. Fuckin' stop that shit cold. Once this real and frightening crisis is over, if not before, Trump is likely going to use it to institute even more draconian policies on immigration. If you don't think that's possible, you haven't been paying attention. What better way to get his base all ready to fuck when it comes to the election in November than to tell them that they are battling to keep diseased foreigners out of our precious white America?
Coming to Trump's defense today was the white nationalist/conspiracy mongering One American News Network (motto: "Fox 'news,' but dumb") and reporter/insane person Chanel Rion. She really asked Trump, "Do you consider the term Chinese food racist?" Believe it or not, Trump doesn't think that's racist. And he's right, unless you're being a racist while saying it. Then Rion, who is oddly allowed in the same room with actual reporters, really asked, "Major left wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives, and they are claiming you are racist for making these claims about Chinese virus. Is it alarming that major media players...are consistently siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicalism, Latin gangs and cartels, and they work right here at the White House with direct access to you and your team?" Honestly, that's not a dog whistle. That's a full-fledged racist blow horn.
Trump answered, in part, "Well, I think they do. I mean, they are siding with China. They are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re siding with many others. China’s the least of it."
We'll be lucky if this doesn't end with them rounding people up and turning them into soylent green. Hell, he'll rebrand it soylent Trump: "Only the best people."
3/14/2020
Trump Vs. the Virus Is Really Trump Vs. Us
I've been trying for the last couple of days to wrap my head around, well, fucking everything. Yes, there are the ways the coronavirus pandemic affects me personally and professionally (I'm not just a tenured liberal professor; I'm the tenured liberal chair of a whole goddamn department). But I've been trying to get used to the idea that if this turns out to be even a fraction of the crisis that it may very well turn out to be, the ignorant, barely literate goon in charge is going to make it far, far worse.
To say that Donald Trump has been flailing about like brain-damaged squirrel is an insult to all those brave squirrels with brain damage. After lying about COVID-19 for weeks, his speech on Wednesday night was the rhetorical equivalent of a shitty older brother being forced to apologize to his little sister for ripping the heads off her dolls. He doesn't mean it, he doesn't really give a shit about her feelings, and, given the chance again, he's gonna rip off more heads, but, hey, fine Mom, here's an apology: "I'm sorry and go fuck yourself." (Trump would never utter the words "I'm sorry," but go with the analogy.) The cascade of lies and misstatements was so reprehensible that I've actually heard from people that some of their MAGA cretin relatives have finally lost faith in their Orange God. But, then again, they've been gobbling shit from his bleached anus for years now, so I don't trust a fucking word from their brown-stained mouths.
And then at his press conference yesterday, he uttered perhaps the Trumpiest line ever: "I don’t take responsibility at all." It was in answer to a question about the pathetic failure of the United States to start widespread testing until now. He continued, "We were given a-a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about." And that's just another fucking lie. It's been three and a half years since this bitch lumbered into office. It's been two years since he shitcanned the officials who looked out for pandemics and such, which Trump pretended he had nothing to do with and knew nothing about (which, if true, is even more damning than having done it). The only way Trump could be more responsible for the situation the United States faces is if he went around personally infecting everyone, which, at the rate he's prancing around in public and shaking hands and more, he may very well be.
There was always going to be some reckoning for the American conservative philosophy of "Government is bullshit." Republicans spent decades tearing down and turning enough Americans against the very things that could help us - a national heath care program, a fair taxation system, family and medical leave, and so much more. Now you can add into that a cruel immigration system that discourages millions of people in the country from seeking medical attention for fear of deportation. This was always going to happen, like a cataclysmic earthquake on the west coast, and that inevitability shows just how fucking idiotic that ideology of individual over society has been, how deadly it has always been. The coronavirus response has been like our gun policy: we're watching other countries take logical steps that will reduce deaths and suffering, but, fuck it, we're not doing it because America or some such shit.
There is a rage that I can't get past here. I'm trying. Really. It's not just a rage at the Trump administration, which is as blitheringly incompetent and dangerous as we always knew it would be. No, it's a rage at the people who voted Trump into office. Seriously, at this point, if you still support Trump, you are a savage, deranged idiot who needs help. It's gotta be madness. It has to be some kind of mental illness when you keep believing that someone is good when they are trying to kill you, like some kind of dissociative disorder. Diagnose this shit and get them some help. Oh, wait, we fucking can't because we don't have a health care system that could handle it.
And I'm just fucking embarrassed for this country, ashamed of how we have mistreated our allies, how we have isolated ourselves from the world in order to feed the ego of this sniveling mancunt who forces people to praise him endlessly, who sees himself as impervious to everything: sickness, responsibility, the law, and whose very affect and tweets demonstrate that he couldn't give a single dry rat turd about the lives of the people he allegedly leads. He's fucking golfing as I write this. Don't say a goddamn word about him unless it's preceded with, "Fuck that guy. Fuck him with every dick everywhere."
We don't know how fucked we're going to be by the coronavirus. But we know, with absolute clarity, that those we depend on fucked up the response. We know that Democrats are saving our asses again with the bill that Nancy Pelosi got through the House (after Republican fuckery weakened it) and that Trump has said he would sign once Mitch McConnell gets his saggy ass back to DC to pass it in the Senate. We know that Democrats are once again going to have to clean up the wreckage that Republicans and their fucking mindless voters have created.
It's what we're damned to do.
Trump isn't really fighting the virus. Trump is fighting with us, the people in this country, for demanding that he do a job that he simply can't do, for asking him to feel things like empathy that he is incapable of feeling. He's never had to give a shit about anyone but himself, and now he's found himself in a situation where he has to. He's a fish out of water or, more appropriately, a cow drowning in a flooded stream that gonna drag him away.
(Note: If you want to know more about the shit I've been dealing with as my college shuts down, it'll be up at the ol' Patreon page, but you gotta sign up and become a donor. Hey, you've got extra time and some money you're not using on movies or concerts or dinners out.)
To say that Donald Trump has been flailing about like brain-damaged squirrel is an insult to all those brave squirrels with brain damage. After lying about COVID-19 for weeks, his speech on Wednesday night was the rhetorical equivalent of a shitty older brother being forced to apologize to his little sister for ripping the heads off her dolls. He doesn't mean it, he doesn't really give a shit about her feelings, and, given the chance again, he's gonna rip off more heads, but, hey, fine Mom, here's an apology: "I'm sorry and go fuck yourself." (Trump would never utter the words "I'm sorry," but go with the analogy.) The cascade of lies and misstatements was so reprehensible that I've actually heard from people that some of their MAGA cretin relatives have finally lost faith in their Orange God. But, then again, they've been gobbling shit from his bleached anus for years now, so I don't trust a fucking word from their brown-stained mouths.
And then at his press conference yesterday, he uttered perhaps the Trumpiest line ever: "I don’t take responsibility at all." It was in answer to a question about the pathetic failure of the United States to start widespread testing until now. He continued, "We were given a-a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about." And that's just another fucking lie. It's been three and a half years since this bitch lumbered into office. It's been two years since he shitcanned the officials who looked out for pandemics and such, which Trump pretended he had nothing to do with and knew nothing about (which, if true, is even more damning than having done it). The only way Trump could be more responsible for the situation the United States faces is if he went around personally infecting everyone, which, at the rate he's prancing around in public and shaking hands and more, he may very well be.
There was always going to be some reckoning for the American conservative philosophy of "Government is bullshit." Republicans spent decades tearing down and turning enough Americans against the very things that could help us - a national heath care program, a fair taxation system, family and medical leave, and so much more. Now you can add into that a cruel immigration system that discourages millions of people in the country from seeking medical attention for fear of deportation. This was always going to happen, like a cataclysmic earthquake on the west coast, and that inevitability shows just how fucking idiotic that ideology of individual over society has been, how deadly it has always been. The coronavirus response has been like our gun policy: we're watching other countries take logical steps that will reduce deaths and suffering, but, fuck it, we're not doing it because America or some such shit.
There is a rage that I can't get past here. I'm trying. Really. It's not just a rage at the Trump administration, which is as blitheringly incompetent and dangerous as we always knew it would be. No, it's a rage at the people who voted Trump into office. Seriously, at this point, if you still support Trump, you are a savage, deranged idiot who needs help. It's gotta be madness. It has to be some kind of mental illness when you keep believing that someone is good when they are trying to kill you, like some kind of dissociative disorder. Diagnose this shit and get them some help. Oh, wait, we fucking can't because we don't have a health care system that could handle it.
And I'm just fucking embarrassed for this country, ashamed of how we have mistreated our allies, how we have isolated ourselves from the world in order to feed the ego of this sniveling mancunt who forces people to praise him endlessly, who sees himself as impervious to everything: sickness, responsibility, the law, and whose very affect and tweets demonstrate that he couldn't give a single dry rat turd about the lives of the people he allegedly leads. He's fucking golfing as I write this. Don't say a goddamn word about him unless it's preceded with, "Fuck that guy. Fuck him with every dick everywhere."
We don't know how fucked we're going to be by the coronavirus. But we know, with absolute clarity, that those we depend on fucked up the response. We know that Democrats are saving our asses again with the bill that Nancy Pelosi got through the House (after Republican fuckery weakened it) and that Trump has said he would sign once Mitch McConnell gets his saggy ass back to DC to pass it in the Senate. We know that Democrats are once again going to have to clean up the wreckage that Republicans and their fucking mindless voters have created.
It's what we're damned to do.
Trump isn't really fighting the virus. Trump is fighting with us, the people in this country, for demanding that he do a job that he simply can't do, for asking him to feel things like empathy that he is incapable of feeling. He's never had to give a shit about anyone but himself, and now he's found himself in a situation where he has to. He's a fish out of water or, more appropriately, a cow drowning in a flooded stream that gonna drag him away.
(Note: If you want to know more about the shit I've been dealing with as my college shuts down, it'll be up at the ol' Patreon page, but you gotta sign up and become a donor. Hey, you've got extra time and some money you're not using on movies or concerts or dinners out.)
3/10/2020
Trump Vs. the Coronavirus: Which One Is the Worse Disease?
It didn't have to be like this. If Donald Trump ever truly gave a damn about being widely beloved instead of just being worshipped by a brainwashed cadre of farting goons and foul geeks, he could have stepped up his game (or, you know, started his game) once the first hints surfaced that the coronavirus was going to head to the United States. He could have risen to the severity of the occasion and demanded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention start testing people immediately. He could have...oh, wait, no, never mind. He couldn't have done any of that because he had already gutted the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services of the staff and funding it needed to control and prevent diseases and provide health services to humans. So fuck that. And fuck us.
Instead, Trump has taken the truly deranged position that everything is just fine and that COVID-19 can't do dick to Americans and, besides, he'd sue it for slander if it made him look bad. He told us that it was no big deal when it was 15 cases in the U.S. He waved off any idea the virus is that much of a threat when it was 240 cases. And, today, he said, really, "As you know, it’s about 600 cases, it’s about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more." Except back when it was 15, he said, "[W]e're going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time." It's like he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
He's not just dangerously unreliable. He's dangerously dangerous. More people will die from coronavirus in the United States because Trump is president. It's truly that simple.
So what's the goal here with this unmerited optimism? With this lowballing of numbers and touting of action that objectively did not happen (Washington doesn't even have enough tests to deal with the single nursing home and its staff where the virus exploded)? I have a dumb theory, and, because it's fuckin' Trump, it's probably dumb enough to be true.
I think Trump's banking on coronavirus doing like the flu and sharply decreasing in severity when warm weather hits. By this wishful thinking, the number of cases will plummet and he can prance around like toddler prince in fancy new breeches, demanding our admiration for his rightness and his prowess at rasslin' a virus. He's thinking he'll be viewed as the motherfuckin' hero. He would hope that victory lap could last until the election, just as the flu season is kicking into gear and, possibly, the coronavirus resurgence. But the scientists who know things (no, really, they do) think pinning hopes on summer is a fool's game. So, of course, it's Trump's.
So we're forced to endure this mad dance of false competence that the White House puts on several times a day, with event after event to reassure us, to tell us of things happening that we already fucking knew and to take credit for shit that they really had nothing to do with. Today, at a meeting with the leaders of various health insurance companies, Vice President and loyal ass remora Mike Pence said, "I’m pleased to report, as you requested, Mr. President, that all the insurance companies here — either today or before today — have agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing and extend coverage for coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans." The implication here is that the insurers agreed to do this because wise ol' President Trump asked 'em to. Except that's not what happened. For instance, when Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield and AmeriHealth announced no co-pays for testing a couple of days ago, there was no mention that this was done at the behest of the White House. They did it because it's one way to not seem like the predatory monsters that they are.
By the way, the number of times that Pence and others have praised Trump at these events is fucking embarrassing. Pence said Trump is responsible for directing the federal government to produce "helpful information for every American family," and that Trump said it should be a "whole-of-government approach" to the virus, as if that is something special. Except you know Trump didn't do shit but sit there like largest carbuncle in history, wondering if it was Friday so he could fuck off back to Mar-a-Lago where he could golf and bitch about how his hotels might lose business and how he needs a government bailout.
It's just fascinating to see Trump insist, as he did again today, that "when people need a test, they can get a test. When the professionals need a test, when they need tests for people, they can get the test." That is objectively untrue. And even if everyone could get tested, it doesn't matter if there aren't enough places for the tests to be completed. As Jake Tapper reported today, in Kirkland, Washington, the first responders who were tested after contact with the patients at the nursing home there now have to get tested again because the samples were kept too long without being processed.
And once we are testing at the levels of other countries (in the U.K., for instance, over 25,000 people so far), the number of patients is going to skyrocket. That's pretty much guaranteed. But the systemic failures of this administration, its delay in reacting, and its abdication in responsibility for the health and well-being of the nation, that shit ought to be impeachable. It ought to at least lose you an election. And any asshole who stood by Trump during this should be tainted forever with his flop-sweat stink.
Instead, Trump has taken the truly deranged position that everything is just fine and that COVID-19 can't do dick to Americans and, besides, he'd sue it for slander if it made him look bad. He told us that it was no big deal when it was 15 cases in the U.S. He waved off any idea the virus is that much of a threat when it was 240 cases. And, today, he said, really, "As you know, it’s about 600 cases, it’s about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more." Except back when it was 15, he said, "[W]e're going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time." It's like he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
He's not just dangerously unreliable. He's dangerously dangerous. More people will die from coronavirus in the United States because Trump is president. It's truly that simple.
So what's the goal here with this unmerited optimism? With this lowballing of numbers and touting of action that objectively did not happen (Washington doesn't even have enough tests to deal with the single nursing home and its staff where the virus exploded)? I have a dumb theory, and, because it's fuckin' Trump, it's probably dumb enough to be true.
I think Trump's banking on coronavirus doing like the flu and sharply decreasing in severity when warm weather hits. By this wishful thinking, the number of cases will plummet and he can prance around like toddler prince in fancy new breeches, demanding our admiration for his rightness and his prowess at rasslin' a virus. He's thinking he'll be viewed as the motherfuckin' hero. He would hope that victory lap could last until the election, just as the flu season is kicking into gear and, possibly, the coronavirus resurgence. But the scientists who know things (no, really, they do) think pinning hopes on summer is a fool's game. So, of course, it's Trump's.
So we're forced to endure this mad dance of false competence that the White House puts on several times a day, with event after event to reassure us, to tell us of things happening that we already fucking knew and to take credit for shit that they really had nothing to do with. Today, at a meeting with the leaders of various health insurance companies, Vice President and loyal ass remora Mike Pence said, "I’m pleased to report, as you requested, Mr. President, that all the insurance companies here — either today or before today — have agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing and extend coverage for coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans." The implication here is that the insurers agreed to do this because wise ol' President Trump asked 'em to. Except that's not what happened. For instance, when Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield and AmeriHealth announced no co-pays for testing a couple of days ago, there was no mention that this was done at the behest of the White House. They did it because it's one way to not seem like the predatory monsters that they are.
By the way, the number of times that Pence and others have praised Trump at these events is fucking embarrassing. Pence said Trump is responsible for directing the federal government to produce "helpful information for every American family," and that Trump said it should be a "whole-of-government approach" to the virus, as if that is something special. Except you know Trump didn't do shit but sit there like largest carbuncle in history, wondering if it was Friday so he could fuck off back to Mar-a-Lago where he could golf and bitch about how his hotels might lose business and how he needs a government bailout.
It's just fascinating to see Trump insist, as he did again today, that "when people need a test, they can get a test. When the professionals need a test, when they need tests for people, they can get the test." That is objectively untrue. And even if everyone could get tested, it doesn't matter if there aren't enough places for the tests to be completed. As Jake Tapper reported today, in Kirkland, Washington, the first responders who were tested after contact with the patients at the nursing home there now have to get tested again because the samples were kept too long without being processed.
And once we are testing at the levels of other countries (in the U.K., for instance, over 25,000 people so far), the number of patients is going to skyrocket. That's pretty much guaranteed. But the systemic failures of this administration, its delay in reacting, and its abdication in responsibility for the health and well-being of the nation, that shit ought to be impeachable. It ought to at least lose you an election. And any asshole who stood by Trump during this should be tainted forever with his flop-sweat stink.
3/07/2020
What Did That Dumb Orange Motherfucker Say Now? (CDC Visit Version)
So it was that our hairless yeti of a president lumbered into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in order to show that he can pretend to be interested in what's being done to slow the outbreak of COVID-19, the coronavirus that is breeding exponentially and spreading with seemingly little pushback in the United States, sort of like Trump's lies. Of course, he ended up doing what he always does, bullshitting, lying, and self-fellating, all while wearing a stupid fucking KAG hat because he's always campaigning.
Trump repeated something that ought to be utterly soul-shreddingly shocking. In his continuing effort to dismiss the coronavirus as essentially the flu (which it decidedly is not), he said, "[L]ast year we had approximately 36,000 deaths due to what’s called the flu. And I was — when I first heard this four, five, six weeks ago — when I was hearing the amount of people that died with flu, I was shocked to hear it. " You got that? The motherfucking president of the goddamned United States just heard a few weeks ago that tens of thousands of Americans die of "what's called the flu." (Note: It's called "the flu" because it's the fuckin' flu.)
That level of giving a shit about the lives of ordinary Americans is, to use a phrase he would understand, par for the course for Trump. In the same response to a reporter's question, he then bragged about the ratings for his ludicrous Fox "news" interview. No, really, he totally did: "I heard it broke all ratings records, but maybe that’s wrong. That’s what they told me. I don’t know. I can’t imagine that." You can imagine that on a regular basis some groveling toad tells Trump that something he did is the biggest or best, and reality can go fuck itself.
And then he literally repeated, "Over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would — I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, 'Does anybody die from the flu?' I didn’t know people died from the flu — 36,000 people died." Just to repeat myself: The President. Of the United States. Didn't know that people die from flu. That's not just sheltered or ignorant; that's "I live in a cave that only shows me Fox and reruns of The Apprentice" level of ignorance."
When asked about the effects on the economy, he bragged about the latest jobs numbers and said he liked that people are staying and spending their money in the United States. Which just makes you want to scream, "What about all the people who aren't traveling from other countries to here?" And then he fucking said again that he was too fucking dumb to know that flu kills people: "You know, they were telling me just now that the common flu kills people and old people is sort of a target." Asked about any concerns about his Nuremberg rallies, he bragged about the size of the crowds and offered this regarding catching coronavirus there: "It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all." Of course not. Because they're already sick and damaged if they're going to a Trump rally.
Regarding the ship that's near San Francisco, Trump expressed concern not for the sick people on the boat but for how that would make his coronavirus stats worse: "I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship." The number did go up and not because of the pathetic cruise ship passengers. And then he lied about the availability of tests.
Every fucking thing got turned around by him so he could say how awesome he thinks he is. Asked about cooperation with South Korea, he weirdly said, "We are working very closely with South Korea. As you know, we’re allies. Even though they’ve made much better trade deals in the past than we did, we’re allies with South Korea. You have heard that, right?"
The two absolute weirdest moments were, first, when Trump once again brought up his goddamn uncle who worked at MIT and used that to assert his superior intelligence: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President."
I can totally imagine a scenario where Trump walks into a lab and picks up something and says, "You know they call this a test tube? Imagine that" and everyone compliments him and tells him they didn't know that and thank him for sharing his knowledge, fearing he'll go into his gorilla rage if they contradict him. It's why everyone has to suck his dick.
The other weird beyond weird moment came not when Trump insulted Washington Governor Jay Inslee for not properly kissing his ass. No, it was when Trump stood there like a petrified lump of shit and compared the test for COVID-19 to other stuff: "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good." Yep, the word "perfect" tripped something in his deformed brain and he had to bring up other things he's called "perfect."
It was all a goddamn embarrassment and a clear demonstration that we are on this road by ourselves. The federal government took so long to get its shit together that we are going to be hit harder than we would have by the coronavirus. We're fucked in that uniquely Trumpian way that we've been fucked. It's not just incompetence and ignorance; implicit in Trump's "understanding" of the medical science is that he doesn't fucking care about any of us, certainly not the people who voted for him who live in states without a Medicaid expansion. That idiot horde bought the ticket to ride this locomotive that's run on bullshit. Take it all the way until you run out of track.
Trump repeated something that ought to be utterly soul-shreddingly shocking. In his continuing effort to dismiss the coronavirus as essentially the flu (which it decidedly is not), he said, "[L]ast year we had approximately 36,000 deaths due to what’s called the flu. And I was — when I first heard this four, five, six weeks ago — when I was hearing the amount of people that died with flu, I was shocked to hear it. " You got that? The motherfucking president of the goddamned United States just heard a few weeks ago that tens of thousands of Americans die of "what's called the flu." (Note: It's called "the flu" because it's the fuckin' flu.)
That level of giving a shit about the lives of ordinary Americans is, to use a phrase he would understand, par for the course for Trump. In the same response to a reporter's question, he then bragged about the ratings for his ludicrous Fox "news" interview. No, really, he totally did: "I heard it broke all ratings records, but maybe that’s wrong. That’s what they told me. I don’t know. I can’t imagine that." You can imagine that on a regular basis some groveling toad tells Trump that something he did is the biggest or best, and reality can go fuck itself.
And then he literally repeated, "Over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would — I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, 'Does anybody die from the flu?' I didn’t know people died from the flu — 36,000 people died." Just to repeat myself: The President. Of the United States. Didn't know that people die from flu. That's not just sheltered or ignorant; that's "I live in a cave that only shows me Fox and reruns of The Apprentice" level of ignorance."
When asked about the effects on the economy, he bragged about the latest jobs numbers and said he liked that people are staying and spending their money in the United States. Which just makes you want to scream, "What about all the people who aren't traveling from other countries to here?" And then he fucking said again that he was too fucking dumb to know that flu kills people: "You know, they were telling me just now that the common flu kills people and old people is sort of a target." Asked about any concerns about his Nuremberg rallies, he bragged about the size of the crowds and offered this regarding catching coronavirus there: "It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all." Of course not. Because they're already sick and damaged if they're going to a Trump rally.
Regarding the ship that's near San Francisco, Trump expressed concern not for the sick people on the boat but for how that would make his coronavirus stats worse: "I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship." The number did go up and not because of the pathetic cruise ship passengers. And then he lied about the availability of tests.
Every fucking thing got turned around by him so he could say how awesome he thinks he is. Asked about cooperation with South Korea, he weirdly said, "We are working very closely with South Korea. As you know, we’re allies. Even though they’ve made much better trade deals in the past than we did, we’re allies with South Korea. You have heard that, right?"
The two absolute weirdest moments were, first, when Trump once again brought up his goddamn uncle who worked at MIT and used that to assert his superior intelligence: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President."
I can totally imagine a scenario where Trump walks into a lab and picks up something and says, "You know they call this a test tube? Imagine that" and everyone compliments him and tells him they didn't know that and thank him for sharing his knowledge, fearing he'll go into his gorilla rage if they contradict him. It's why everyone has to suck his dick.
The other weird beyond weird moment came not when Trump insulted Washington Governor Jay Inslee for not properly kissing his ass. No, it was when Trump stood there like a petrified lump of shit and compared the test for COVID-19 to other stuff: "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good." Yep, the word "perfect" tripped something in his deformed brain and he had to bring up other things he's called "perfect."
It was all a goddamn embarrassment and a clear demonstration that we are on this road by ourselves. The federal government took so long to get its shit together that we are going to be hit harder than we would have by the coronavirus. We're fucked in that uniquely Trumpian way that we've been fucked. It's not just incompetence and ignorance; implicit in Trump's "understanding" of the medical science is that he doesn't fucking care about any of us, certainly not the people who voted for him who live in states without a Medicaid expansion. That idiot horde bought the ticket to ride this locomotive that's run on bullshit. Take it all the way until you run out of track.
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