911 Pearls

Under the Cover of COVID:  Coronavirus is here, there and everywhere, with an emphasis on the here so naturally it makes great sense that late Friday, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general who shared the Ukraine whistleblower report with Congress.  You have to hand it to Trump, he’s woefully incompetent when it comes to anticipating and dealing with pandemics but he’s awfully good at ridding the government of people who honor the mission of their jobs, especially when those missions involve talking truth to power.  The reaction to Trump’s deed went according to script, Democrats most specifically House Intel Chief Adam Schiff were outraged by Trump’s move and a very few Republican’s, like Senate Intel Chief Richard Burr who is now under scrutiny for his decision to dump stocks while minimizing the Coronavirus threat, expressed concern. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department Inspector General, known for his independence, he’s the guy who has been uncovering FISA abuses, reacted strongly saying “aggressive, independent oversight' will persist” despite Trump’s action, possibly putting a target on his own back and yesterday the fired Atkinson issued a statement saying what we all know, that he was fired for doing his job properly.  On that insider trading front, we keep learning more about Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler’s insider trading. In addition to dumping her exposed positions, while she was downplaying concerns about the virus, she and her husband, the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange(!), invested in a maker of hospital protective gear. On the fired for doing their job front, Brett Crozier, the Navy Captain, who was fired for sounding an alarm about the number of people on his ship sick and testing positive for COVID 19, has now tested positive for the virus.  The party line is that Captain Crozier was fired for going outside of usual Navy channels to air his grievances, a theory that doesn’t fly if you think that acting to protect your crew is equivalent to airing grievances. Navy brass wants us all to think that they made the decision to replace Captain Crozier all by themselves, but one of them has all but admitted that the direction came from the Oval Office and Trump pretty much reinforced that when he hammered Crozier during one of his weekend press conference/virus rallies.

Palm Sunday Pop-Up:  Getting to back to Trump and his rallies, he held more daily press conferences this weekend, including an especially incoherent, rambling one last night, which wasn’t on his schedule in fact the White House had issued a “lid,” their way of assuring the White House press that their day was over.  Likely yesterday’s pop up Palm Sunday “rally” took place to allow Trump to provide counterprogramming to a similarly timed Joe Biden internet event  and to push back at morning statements from Surgeon General Jerome Adams who told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that this week is “going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it's not going to be localized, it's going to be happening all over the country and I want America to understand that."  Or maybe Trump just wanted to say something nice about his “good friend” the Queen of England who delivered a heartwarming speech of support to her flock or to send the hospitalized PM Boris Johnson good tidings.  Getting back to Surgeon General Adam’s, his message flies in the face of Trump’s messaging, particularly the part about while things aren’t good yet, they are getting better and that everyone should dust off their team jerseys because it’s time to start buying tickets to all those crowded sports events that he wants back on the calendar pronto.  Trump had nothing new to say during yesterday’s rally, so he mostly stuck to the talking points he pushed on Saturday.  And I do mean pushed, he’s now advocating harder than ever for hydroxychloroquine,  so much so that on Saturday he said that even though he feels fine, he’s thinking of taking some himself, as a preventative because he’s heard from his friends, and by friends think Rudy Giuliani who has added pharmacology advisor to his portfolio, that absolutely no one taking the drug for another preexisting condition such as lupus has contracted the virus. To be clear, Trump’s lupus assertion is not based in fact or evidence, nor is his assertion that the hydroxychloroquine combination is safe for everyone.  As to the effectiveness of the hydroxychloroquine/antibiotic combination, it is being widely prescribed in hospitals right now but it’s still too early to know if it helps.  For his part Trump admits that he’s not a doctor but his gut tells him what to say and right now his gut says pop those pills.  Apparently real doctor/expert Fauci is positively apoplectic about Trump pushing hydroxychloroquine, so much so that Axios reports that Fauci got into an “epic” verbal battle with Trump’s economic advisor Peter Navarro who, like Giuliani has suddenly become a pharmacological expert.

No Supplies For You:  On the supply front, Trump says he’s sources millions of those pills, and he may have, but he also continues to assert that tens of thousands are on their way from the US auto companies and they’re not, or at least they’re not going to be here in time for this go round of the virus and that everyone is overstating their needs anyway.  During yesterday’s press event, he interrupted and verbally attacked a reporter who tried to probe that the ventilator/auto company production myth.  On the attack front, Trump can’t quite figure out how to handle the increasingly popular NY Governor Andrew Cuomo so he vacillates between saying nice things about him and criticizing him for not purchasing tens of thousands of ventilators last year and for exaggerating his needs. On the positive front, Trump is sending in military medical teams to help and has sent some resources, and of course is also taking credit for resources that Cuomo appears to have independently sourced from Alibaba’s Jack Ma.  With Washington State appearing to be past its infection peak, Trump has now shifted his focus.  He’s no longer making  nasty remarks about Governor Inslee, now he’s attacking Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker who had the nerve to say that Trump has no understanding of what the word federal means, or the purpose of a FEMA, the federal agency that’s supposed to step up and help states facing dire needs. Pritzker wasn’t just targeting Trump with those remarks, no doubt he was also hammering son in law Kushner who appears to have had FEMA’s website statement amended to make it consistent with his remarks that Federal stores of supplies aren’t really meant for all those “needy” states.   As to those Federal supplies, not only are many of them in poor conditions, but Trump’s team didn’t even start trying to bolster them until sometime in March, largely because they all were still believers in Trump’s delusional the “virus can’t touch us” mantra. Anyway, Trump insists that the whole virus thing is Obama’s fault.    

Et Cetera:  Trump has finally come up with a solution of sorts to deal with any COVID 19 people who don’t have health insurance.  That solution does not involve opening the federal Obamacare exchanges, instead he’s promising hospitals that they will get reimbursed at the Medicare rate for treating the uninsured but only for their virus related treatment.  That money will be coming from the $100 billion of money already set aside for hospitals in the recently passed $2 trillion emergency package.  So to be clear, that was set  aside for hospitals will now get stretched to cover the uninsured. Not surprisingly, that solution benefits states that aren’t already in the Medicaid expansion program and those without their own Obamacare exchanges.  In other words, Trump’s red states will benefit more than the blue states.  Why is that solution not surprising?  And is anyone surprised that Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is still pursuing his Burisma/Hunter Biden investigation?   On the Wisconsin front, despite push back from anyone with any sense, the state’s primary is still scheduled to take place tomorrow.  Lastly, special thanks to Oregon Governor  Kate Brown for sending 140 ventilators to NY.  Like Cuomo, I really hope we are in a position to return them soon and also hope that yesterday’s very preliminary indication that we’ve hit our peak or maybe just a plateau is for real.