The New Jackie

RNC Night Two:  Last night Pam Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General who conveniently opted out of prosecuting the fraud that was Trump University after receiving a political contribution/pay off from Trump, attacked Joe Biden for colluding with Ukraine to enrich his son Hunter.  That she managed to do that with a straight face the very same week that we learned that simple son Eric, who also spoke last night, was dodging a New York State subpoena related to an investigation into the Trump organization’s financial doings was  beyond hypocritical but not surprising because the Trump set lies and says horrific things all the time.  Bondi’s performance was just the tip of last night’s very hypocritical iceberg.  Trump who hates immigrants, or at least those who don’t qualify for “genius” model visas, staged a citizenship ceremony for a crowd straight from Village People Central Casting Inc:  an Indian, a Muslim, an African, a Latin American, etc. While tens of thousands of other qualified applicants remain mired in COVID limbo because the Trump administration won’t let their citizenship ceremonies progress via Zoom, this group was move to the head of the pack for Trump’s reelection show optics.  Then again, who knows if their citizenship papers will stand up to any scrutiny as their ceremony was presided over by Chad Wolf, Trump’s Acting Head of Homeland Security, whose legitimacy to serve in his position is questionable which probably explains why Trump formally nominated him to serve as the permanent head of DHS yesterday. Back to the show, daughter Tiffany confirmed once and for all that she’s team Trump while also slamming the “biased” media and cancel culture, a bit ironic since one of her father’s planned speakers, so-called “angel” mom Mary Ann Mendoza had her time slot cancelled at the last minute after her tweet promoting the anti-Semitic  Protocol of the Elders of Zion trope went viral. Pulling an excuse from Trump’s book, Mendoza said that her retweeting of that old Jews control the world and are out to get you garbage was an inadvertent boo-boo, that she hadn’t read the whole thing that she retweeted but apparently she has a history of tweeting hate, a history that would have been disqualifying earlier had the Trump screeners not agreed with her sentiments. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo should have been cancelled too because diplomats aren’t supposed to appear at political events, or at least that’s what his legal beagles advised him, a message he passed on to all of his State Department denizens just a few months ago,  but he was there last night, well there virtually, appearing from Jerusalem with the awesome lights of the Dome of the Rock holy site serving as his backdrop as he touted Trump’s foreign affairs acumen and positioned himself for a run for the presidency in 2024. Did anyone think that he’d let Nikki Haley, one of his likely Republican competitors, appear at the convention without an appearance of his own legal or not.  And then there’s Melania, exquisitely coifed and wearing a Nazi chic military ensemble she gets points for acknowledging the traumatic impact of the coronavirus epidemic, that’s the epidemic that everyone else in Trump world either failed to mention or said was almost behind us, but she gave them back by bragging about the “legitimate” way that she “earned“ her citizenship, by pushing her Be Best crap and by saying that we deserve total honesty from our president, more than implying that her husband, the model of deception, rather than Joe Biden, was the guy to provide that. So basically, from my vantage point last night was a sh-t show but then again, Trump, who also used the stage to pardon someone Black while Kenosha, Wisconsin was erupting into flames over the police shooting, in the back, of another Black man, still alive but paralyzed and missing a few key organs, isn’t trying to get my vote, rather he’s going for those suburban white housewives and who knows, maybe this is what it takes to keep them on the Trump train.   

Viral Musings:  We’re up to around 178,000 COVID deaths and are supposed to be happy that the daily death count is trending downward but we are far from out of the woods as the number of new cases continues to be very high. The CDC has a solution for that, they’ve changed their recommendations about who should be tested saying that if you’ve been exposed to someone who’s COVID positive but are asymptomatic, there’s no need to get tested.  That new “advice” flies in the face of what we’ve been told because by now we know that asymptomatic people can be spreaders and that the only way to squelch the virus is to figure out who is doing the spreading. Most medical experts rightfully believe that these new recommendations are dangerous and will make it virtually impossible to do contact tracing but obviously they do have one very significant plus – they please Trump because as he’s told us repeatedly too much testing is the reason that our COVID count is so high.  Anyway there aren’t enough tests, especially quick ones, to go around though there must have been plenty available at the White House yesterday as the live audience and the pardon and citizenship winners weren’t adequately distanced and few, if any, were wearing masks, not even those saluting military guys that Trump had hanging out in dress uniform, part of his look at me, I’m the King, stage setting.  As to curing the virus, it turns out that  convalescent plasma is even further from being the miracle cure that Trump “announced” it was on Sunday.  Facing wilting criticism from the medical community, FDA Head Stephen Hahn admitted yesterday that he had overstated its benefits saying that he misspoke and should have said that “the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction," in other words that 35% improvement in survival he cited on Sunday, an inexcusable exaggeration.  Obviously Hahn is feeling the pressure to satisfy Trump who is desperate for a quick COVID cure, but Hahn’s misstatement is likely to have deadly consequences as it calls his and the FDA’s credibility into question. We all want a cure, and if we’re sick enough most of us will try anything but the equation for vaccination is different. A lot of people who otherwise would get vaccinated won’t jeopardize their health if they believe that the FDA is putting Trump’s political ambitions ahead of their health and if the FDA keeps on letting Trump and people like his trade advisor Peter Navarro make their decisions for them we will all be right to be concerned.  That’s the same Peter Navarro who is still pushing hydroxychloroquine and said yesterday that Melania is the Jackie Kennedy of her time. Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t cure or prevent COVID, Melania is not the new Jackie, and the Rose Garden looked far better before she added the concrete walkway and took away the trees.