Gray is the New Orange

Another Day, Another Rally: It took only minutes for yesterday’s edition of ‘As My Stomach Turns’ to go fully off the rails.  After teasing that he would be releasing really beautiful guidelines to begin the opening of the country by May 1, or even sooner, later today, Trump went off topic, launching into another one of his epic rants.  This one was about the Senate’s failure to confirm so many of the people he’s nominated to fill hundreds of vacant government positions, people he asserts are needed now more than ever given the virus crisis, the crisis he’ll probably make worse by opening up too soon.  Trump went on to threaten to use his presidential power to adjourn both houses of government to allow him get all of those slots filled via unilateral recess appointments.  For the record, though recess appointments are a thing, presidents can only adjourn the House and Senate under certain conditions and those conditions have not been met.  Apparently whatever incompetent aide set him off in the direction of recess appointments failed to fully inform him about that.  In any case, the Senate is run by Trump’s very own Republican party, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that the people who haven’t been confirmed are either woefully unqualified, haven’t passed their background checks and/or are members of the KKK or another similar white supremacist organization.  And for the record there aren’t hundreds of them, as of now 82 of Trump’s nominees remain unconfirmed, he never bothered to nominate anyone to fill any of the other vacant 150 slots.  Getting back to his May Day plans, the Wall Street Journal reports that yesterday, banking and financial services executives told him that he would need to dramatically increase the availability of virus testing in order for the public to be confident enough to return to work, eat at restaurants or shop in retail establishments.  When a reporter asked Trump about that, he started in with his usual testing spiel, asserting again that under his guidance the US has tested more people than any other country, that his tests, including the initial faulty ones developed by the CDC were and are the best and that anyway, it’s not his job to stand in Walmart parking lots swabbing people’s throats, that’s the job of state governors. Who knows, maybe Trump’s fear that someone really expects him to do some swabbing is the reason that his usually unworldly orange hair is now grey.  Really it’s grey, or at least it was yesterday.   Not coincidentally many of the governors, particularly the rational ones, agree that testing needs to be ramped up and that the best way to make that happen ASAP would be for Trump to use the power he really has, the Defense Production Act, but for some reason he still won’t do that. 

Porky Pig and Friends: Although no one directly addressed the crisis at the Sioux City, South Dakota pork processing plant, the Smithfield plant that’s now closed because over 500 of its employees are COVID 19 positive, Trump had Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue at the daily rally to speak about how confident he is that the country’s food chain is in fine shape and that there are no shortages on the horizon, which leads skeptical me to believe that things are probably much worse than we’re being told.  And once again, instead of focusing on the processing plant catastrophes, Trump used Perdue’s presence to complain some more about all his unconfirmed appointees, saying that Perdue calls him daily to ask when his undersecretary will make it through the Senate gauntlet, not to discuss infected plants but to complain about appointees?  Before exiting, Trump also fielded some questions about his decision to hold up funding to the World Health Organization, a decision that’s been met with wide condemnation at home and abroad and one that Speaker Pelosi says isn’t even possible because she controls the purse strings not him.  It’s not just Pelosi, though Senator Lindsey Graham has tweeted his full support for defunding WHO, Trump’s own CDC Head Robert Redfield appears to be team Pelosi on this one, yesterday he said “that WHO has been a longstanding partner for CDC. We've worked together to fight health crises around the world. We continue to do that." Could Redfield be the next to be pushed aside?  If so he’ll have plenty of company.  Health and Human Secretary Azar is currently in the dog house, Trump is so upset about all those reports that Azar warned him of the impending pandemic in January that he’s now appointed Michael Caputo, one of his die hard supporters to serve as Health and Human Services’ new Communications Director.  Caputo is incredibly qualified for the job, he’s a long term associate of both Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and though he has no health care experience he has resided in Russia and did communications work for Gazprom.  Kellyanne Conway reared her head yesterday too, weighing in WHO, she defended Trump’s defunding decision saying “This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks. You would think that people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that.” Apparently spinmeister Kellyanne doesn’t understand that “19” refers to the year 2019, and is not a reference to the novel virus’ 19^th appearance. 

Democrats:  Add Elizabeth Warren to the long list of Democrats who have now endorsed Joe Biden for president.  Yesterday she said "Empathy matters. And, in this moment of crisis, it's more important than ever that the next president restores Americans' faith in good, effective government. Joe Biden has spent nearly his entire life in public service. He knows that a government run with integrity, competence, and heart will save lives and save livelihoods. And we can't afford to let Donald Trump continue to endanger the lives and livelihoods of every American."   She also appears very interested in being Joe’s VEEP choice, last night when Rachel Maddow asked her if she would accept the position she answered YES!  Probably not going to happen but there’s no point in being shy about one’s aspirations.  At least that’s the position that Georgia’s Stacey Abrams is also taking, she’s told everyone who’s asked her that she’d love to be Biden’s VEEP too.  My guess is that Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar are closer to the top of that list but who knows.