Sidebar: "Let's Call It Trumpvirus"

In our Sunday School Extra Credit post this week, Chuck Todd asked Mike Pence about some comments being made by people on the right tabout people on the left trying trying to weaponize and politicize the coronavirus against the president.  

Here's a comment from Junior that Todd used, along with one from Rush Limbaugh and Ronna McDaniel, to spur some conversation.

For them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump's streak of winning is a new level of sickness.

We'll leave Junior's particular level of sickness out of the picture, and focus on what Pence said, after Todd pressed him to name names. 

CT: Because this is just -- it just feels like gas-lighting. Please name some names. I’m -- we're all big -- we're all big people here. Name some names.

VP: There was a column in the New York Times by a prominent liberal journalist that said, "We should rename it the Trump virus." --

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/

AFP via Getty Images

That was done, the veep said, "so that the president would be blamed." 

So, what did the piece, with the headline "Let's Call it Trumpvirus," say? Let's take a look at what columnist Gail Collins, former editor of the Times' Op-Ed page, wrote.

On appointing Mike Pence to be head of the coronavirus task force: 

So, our Coronavirus Czar is going to be … Mike Pence. Feeling more secure? “I know full well the importance of presidential leadership,” the vice president said as soon as he was introduced in his new role. Totally qualified. First criterion for every job in this administration is capacity for praising the gloriousness of our commander in chief... 

In contrast, here's what the president had to say about appointing a similarly unqualified person to lead a pandemic effort. 

Rightfully so, he was not the only one to criticize the Obama appointment, just as many others besides Collins have criticized his own appointment of his groveling veep to this critical role. 

On our stock market's roller-coaster, which came on the heels of similar thrill rides in every global market, the president downplayed the impact of a potential pandemic, and instead pointed to his Democratic opponents. 

“I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democrat candidates standing on that stage making fools out of themselves,” Trump told reporters. Plus, that virus thing is … not necessarily a big deal. What really “shocked” him, Trump said, was his discovery that “the flu in our country kills 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year.”

So the problems are the Democrats and the flu...

But it's OK, because everything's going to be great, and we'll keep #winning, just like junior said.

The president had been saying everything is totally under control for some time. (“It’s one person coming in from China.”) The whole administration picked up the cry. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, 82, overcame his habit of dozing off at meetings long enough to tell Fox Business Network that the disease would “accelerate the return of jobs” from overseas.

Trump totally agrees. “What it’s gonna do is keep people home, and they’re going to travel to places we have,” he said. See? The virus thing is a bonus.

The article also talks about the elimination of the epidemic-watching groups that were in place during the previous administration.

 One was headed by the highly regarded Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, who got sent packing by John Bolton. Another infectious disease expert, Tom Bossert, suddenly vanished from the Department of Homeland Security in 2018, presumably also at the hand of John You-know-who.

If Bolton’s memoir ever makes it into print, do you think it’ll have a chapter called “My War on Pandemic Fighters?” OK, probably not.

And, it talks about a couple of what Trump surely would have called SAD! performances, had these folks been in someone else's administration. First, there was this:

The nation got its first real look at Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, who appeared before a Senate subcommittee and admitted he had no idea how the virus was transmitted among humans, exactly how dangerous it was, or … pretty much anything. 

When Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican not known for anti-administration bias, asked whether the country had enough respirators to deal with a coronavirus epidemic, Wolf answered in the affirmative.  

“We just heard testimony that we don’t,” Kennedy responded. “OK,” said Wolf. 

To be fair, he’s only been on the job since November. He’s the fifth head of Homeland Security Trump’s had in the last three years. Good thing he has a deputy — or at least an acting deputy — to help. That would be Ken Cuccinelli, who made news this week when he went on Twitter to ask for tips on how to find an online map of coronavirus sites posted by Johns Hopkins University. (“Here’s hoping it goes back up soon.”) 

And then, there was this, in reference to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, also part of the P-Team.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Azar was asked if he’d consider using some of the billions of dollars in funds for Trump’s border wall to help combat the current health crisis. Azar just chuckled.

Actually, people, this is probably not a theme we ought to be pursuing. Chances are, if the president is encouraged to mix the subjects of coronavirus and Mexico walls, he’ll suddenly announce that we need a barrier much bigger and thicker and more expensive, so it can stop the flow of immigrant germs.

And on that last part, let's go again to that same Extra Credit post, which included a Chris Wallace/Azar interview, in which the subject of Mexico came up.

Wallace asked whether there was any serious consideration to close the US/Mexican border.

Well, right now Mexico has very few cases. So that would -- that would take a real change in the epidemiological profile and the risk to the US from there.  I think (the president) is trying to say is, all things are on the table. We're not going to take anything off the table in our armamentarium of tools we have to protect the American people. 

Regular readers know my profound distaste for the president and most of the people in his administration, but this opinion piece is not untruthful; it references real occurrences and real comments from real members of the administration. Sure, it adds a bit of sarcasm, but that does not make it incorrect, nor does it politicize the virus. It certainly doesn't demonstrate a "new level of sickness" - Donny Jr can hold that title all by himself. Nor does it justify the veep's closing thoughts from his MTP interview.

VP: And when you see voices on our side pushing back on outrageous and irresponsible rhetoric on the other side, I think that's important.

CT: Do you think this rhetoric from your side helps?

VP: I, I never begrudge people responding to unwarranted, unjustified attacks. 

All I can say it that it's even more abundantly clear why the GOP can't do anything about gun safety legislation. It's not the NRA's fault - it's that these goofballs think that the truth is a weapon being used against them.