Five O'Clock Follies

Propaganda Time: You might not remember the Viet Nam era deceptive military updates that came to be known as the Five O’Clock Follies or Baghdad Bob but Trump clearly does.  Yesterday taking a page from both, most notably the notoriously false Iraqi information minister who bragged about Iraq’s superiority and impending victory to the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Trump helmed a virus press conference/campaign rally that took propaganda to a level that would have even astounded Baghdad Bob.  It opened with Trump “inviting” virus guru Dr Fauci to make a few obviously mandated remarks.  Instead of providing a virus update, Fauci apologized for the bruhaha created by his Sunday remarks, the ones where he said that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could have saved lives.  Fauci asserted that he wasn’t being forced to clarify his remarks, but who was he kidding?  As to Trump, his response to questions about why he had retweeted that Fire Fauci hashtag was to say it wasn’t a mistake, he gets to retweet whatever he wants because he’s King.  Okay, he didn’t really say that he was king, but as the pep rally wore on it was clear that he believes that he is.  Before he got to the sovereignty stuff, he stepped aside to show what can only be described as a propaganda film, a poorly edited attempt to refute the weekend’s NY Times tick tock of all the times he ignored warnings about the impending pandemic.  The film included snippets of Fox TV reports extolling his brilliance and Speaker Pelosi and Senator Minority Leader Schumer’s failings but was so obviously inappropriate and short on facts that both CNN and MSNBC cut away.  By the way, using White House funds, as in your money, to make campaign propaganda is not Kosher, but what about Trump is?   

King of Kings:  Getting back to the sovereignty thing, early in the day Trump tweeted “For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government.  Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect…”  Most of those governors, disagree with Trump’s assessment, as does the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution but when has that old Constitution ever deterred Trump.  Making it clear that he was less than pleased by the joint announcement spearheaded by NY’s Governor Cuomo that he will be working with the Governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Delaware and Massachusetts on a joint reopening strategy, an announcement similar to one made by the Governors of California, Washington and Oregon, Trump said that he was sure that all the Governors will get in line with his plans, threatening that if they don’t they will suffer the consequences.  Kingly, Czar-like, Dictatory, but hardly presidential.  During the same pep rally/misinformation moment Trump slammed a few members of the press for asking some tough questions, nothing new there but those correspondents, particularly CBS’s Paula Reid who pressed him, asking “ What did you and your administration do with the time the (Chinese) travel ban bought you,” particularly pressing him to explain what he’d done to prepare the country during February and March.  Trump responded to Reid by calling her  "fake" and claiming that her network has a lower approval rating than it ever had before "times, probably, three."

Election Update:  The results are in from the Wisconsin primary, at least the voting results are in, the morbidity/mortality results will take a bit longer to count. As expected Joe Biden trounced Bernie Sanders 63% to 31%, particularly notable since Wisconsin was one of the states that Bernie won in 2016.  Yesterday Sanders joined Biden on a virtual conference call to discuss strategies for dealing with COVID 19.  During that call, Sanders endorsed Biden’s candidacy saying “We need you in the White House. I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe, ” adding “Today, I am asking all Americans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse.”  The endorsement wasn’t surprising but the timing was, it took Bernie far longer to endorse Hillary back in 2016. By the way, Elizabeth Warren still hasn’t endorsed Biden, what’s that about?  Getting back to Wisconsin, one of the reasons that the state’s Republicans pushed so hard for the primary to go forward despite the associated health risks was because they were convinced that their hoped for poor Democratic turnout would insure that their candidate for the state’s Supreme Court would stand a greater chance of victory.  That gambit did not pay off as planned as liberal Democratic challenger Jill Karofsky won the judgeship by a substantial amount, ousting the conservative Trump endorsed incumbent, Justice Daniel Kelly.     

Et Cetera:  Trump, who has been complaining about the US Postal Service for a long time now, is doing his best to throw it under the bus.  Whether that’s part of his grudge against Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, or because he figures that killing or further damaging the postal service will making voting by mail more difficult, if not impossible in November, is not clear.  Killing off the Postal Service is one of those things that would really hurt his base, but so does trying to overturn Obamacare and so far most of them haven’t figured that out.  It’s not just the Postal Service, Trump is also pushing hard to follow through on his threats to cut back on the US’s contribution to the World Health Organization.  Flawed or not, now is probably not the right time to do so but we’re talking about Trump, hardly the most rational thinker.