Ventilator King

Human Resources:  The news was filled with stories about people yesterday: good ones who have seen their jobs diminished: evil ones who can’t stop saying and doing, or at the very least trying to do hateful things; and C-players who may have really screwed up, or may just be the scapegoat of the day or both.  First the good ones, back in late February after Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases who is also Rod Rosenstein’s sister, very publicly and presciently warned that a pandemic was coming and that she was preparing her children for dramatic changes in their daily lives, Trump, who was still claiming that the coronavirus was a bigly nothing, tried to have her fired.  She’s still employed, but notably we haven’t heard from her since then.  Keeping with that theme, yesterday Dr Rick Bright, was removed from his position as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) where he was in charge of efforts to come up with a COVID 19 vaccine because why would we ever want our most experienced vaccine developer working on the disease responsible for the nightmare we are all currently living?  The highly respected Bright, who was shifted to another position that takes him away from vaccination development and deprives the country of his expertise, isn’t going down quietly.  Yesterday, after hiring a whistle blower lawyer, he issued a statement saying that he was removed because of his criticism of the administration’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine and its waste of money on that and other “quack” cures being advocated by “certain” politicians and appointees. When asked about Bright during his daily virus rally, Trump said that he’d never heard of him, said maybe he was pushed out of his job and maybe he wasn’t and then challenged the querying reporter for even saying that Bright was a respected expert.  Among others, Bright blames Health Secretary Alex Azar for his demotion.  Azar, who was yesterday’s whipping boy, also was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article/hit piece that detailed how many times he screwed up, the Journal even pointed out that he’d put a political appointee whose previous job experience was breeding labradoodles in charge of the pandemic task force. However, since Trump recently had Michael Caputo, one of his long term supporters and a Roger Stone caliber king of propagating misinformation, put in charge of the Health Department’s press relations because he wasn’t happy that several early press reports said that he had ignored Azar’s early warnings about the coming COVID 19 onslaught, it’s hard to tell if Azar is the abject failure that the WSJ says he is or whether he is just the scapegoat du jour or both.  In any case, Azar is still Health Secretary.  Then there’s Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, things haven’t been going his way lately, the pandemic has interfered with his ability to get all those really young conservative judges confirmed to lifetime appointments, his legislative initiatives keep getting rewritten by Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and he’s facing a challenge in his upcoming election. That might explain why yesterday, despite Trump’s promise to NY’s Governor Cuomo that the next piece of recovery legislation will provide money to the state’s with the biggest pandemic related budget gaps, McConnell said that he favors letting those states declare bankruptcy rather than providing them with any aid.  Who needs state funded essential services and education anyway?

Virus Rally:  During yesterday’s very long virus update/rally Trump, the self-proclaimed King of Ventilators, continued to assert that he’s the best and that his administration is doing more virus testing than all other country’s combined. He talked a bit about how he’s helping the states source testing paraphernalia but it was hard to tell whether he was following through with his promises or just talking about them especially since he once again said that “some people and governors” believe that testing isn’t really all that necessary. Notably, before he even launched into all his usual patting himself on the back stuff, he called CDC Director Robert Redfield up to the podium to have him correct a Washington Post article which quoted him as saying that “There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through. We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time." Redfield,  dutifully went to the podium but pretty much repeated the disputed remarks, adding only that he’d said them to impress upon the public the importance of getting their seasonal flu shots. While both Trump and VP Pence insisted that the coronavirus will be mostly if not entirely gone by the fall, if not sooner, Dr Fauci said it would most likely be back but that since we had all become so good at social distancing, we’ll be able to keep it more or less under control during its next visit.  Surprisingly, everyone including Trump said that Georgia’s Governor Kemp’s decision to open up tattoo parlors and other such facilities was premature.  Trump did that while making it clear that he still thinks that Kemp, who he added beat that woman Stacey Abrams because he campaigned for him, is awesome and that he understands the desire to open up tattoo shops because those wonderful Bikers for Trump are among his biggest fans.  In keeping with his, take no responsibility for anything approach, Trump also said that while he wouldn’t open all those questionable locales, if Kemp wants to he can because it’s his decision and basically the buck stops everywhere but Trump’s desk, except with regard to immigration and the dismantling of environmental protections, of course.  And to make us all feel better Trump plans to have the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels fly over during his upcoming July 4 celebrations to make up for having to keep the number of holiday attendees down to a size that can be adequately socially distanced, but a crowd that will still be bigger than the one that Dr Martin Luther King had for his “I’ve Got a Dream” March on Washington.  Yup, he said that.