It's no secret that Kushner's crooked father blatantly bought him a Harvard acceptance. But Trump-- whose family bought him an acceptance to Wharton-- still treated him like "a Harvard genius." But Kushner is a moron and has given Trump bad advice on everything he's touched-- including the pandemic. This week Gabe Sherman reported for Vanity Fair that Señor Trumpanzee is "regretting that Kushner swooped into the coronavirus response last week. Kushner, according to sources, encouraged Trump to treat the emergency as a P.R. problem when Fauci and others were calling for aggressive action.'This was Jared saying the world needs me to solve another problem,' a former White House official said. One source briefed on the internal conversations told me that Kushner advised Trump not to call a national emergency during his Oval Office address on March 11 because 'it would tank the markets.' The markets cratered anyway, and Trump announced the national emergency on Friday. 'They had to clean that up on Friday,' another former West Wing official said. Trump was also said to be angry that Kushner oversold Google’s coronavirus testing website when in fact the tech giant had a fledgling effort. Trump got slammed in the press for promoting the phantom Google product. 'Jared told Trump that Google was doing an entire website that would be up in 72 hours and had 1,100 people working on it 24/7. That’s just a lie,' the source briefed on the internal conversations told me."Late last night Peter Baker and Eillen Sullivan reported for the NY Times that the Trumpist government is finally taking this horror seriously and has put together a 100 page plan of action to combat COVID-19. It warns that the "pandemic 'will last 18 months or longer' and could include 'multiple waves,' resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system." Instead of calling it a Democratic hoax and persuading his feeble-minded followers to ignore all warnings, Trump could have had the government preparing for this since January instead of now-- when it is basically too late to stop the worst of it. The plan notes that "The spread and severity of COVID-19 will be difficult to forecast and characterize" and warns of "significant shortages for government, private sector, and individual U.S. consumers."Here we are in mid-March and the Trumpist regime is finally talking about "production of critical equipment and supplies such as ventilators, respirators and protective gear for health care workers." They've been lying to the public, saying "masks do no good" and in the next sentence saying how the masks are needed by health care professionals so don't buy them. Trump supporters are too dumb to see the contradiction there. Until a week ago when I was going into my local grocery store looking like this, no one else was wearing a mask and everyone edged away from me. Now almost half the customers are wearing masks and no one looks at me funny.The Trump plan continues that "Shortages of products may occur, impacting health care, emergency services, and other elements of critical infrastructure. This includes potentially critical shortages of diagnostics, medical supplies (including PPE (personal protective equipment) and pharmaceuticals and staffing in some locations... State and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure and communications channels, will be stressed and potentially less reliable. These stresses may also increase the challenges of getting updated messages and coordinating guidance to these jurisdictions directly."Andy Levin helped push the Trumpists to finally get off the stick with a letter several dozens members of Congress co-signed that pointed out that "During World War II, our country adapted to the demands of the time to produce mass quantities of bombers, tanks, and many smaller items needed to save democracy and freedom in the world. We know what the demands of this time are, and we must act now to meet these demands."Yesterday, the Imbecile-in-Chief said he will not invoke the Defense Production Act, telling reporters that "We’re able to do that if we have to. Right now, we haven’t had to, but it’s certainly ready. If I want it, we can do it very quickly. We’ve studied it very closely over two weeks ago, actually. We’ll make that decision pretty quickly if we need it. We hope we don’t need it. It’s a big step." [UPDATE: Under pressure, he finally did it this afternoon.] He only acts when the horse is out of the barn. It's like pulling teeth to get him to take any of the steps necessary to begin the process of getting this under control. Trump is the worst possible leader for a crisis like this when we need someone to get ahead of the oncoming disaster, not to wait until it's already devastated everything in its wake. He should do what Singapore and Taiwan did to protect its citizens, not what Italy and Spain didn't do to allow the pandemic to get out of control. But Trump has made every wrong decision at every juncture on the pandemic.Yesterday Trump was bragging how West Virginia needed no help because there isn't a single case in the state. Today Trump-friendly Democrat Joe Manchin announced West Virginia's first confirmed case and announced that he "was hoping the president would not go down that road and make it seem like we’re doing something special. What they did: They didn’t test… Up until a couple days ago we only had 40 tests done, now I think we’re at a 130 or so. But with that being said we have no testing, we’re not prepared, people think we’re immune from this." That basically describes all the counties in America where Trump won big victories in 2016, not just in West Virginia, but in states like Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Wyoming, Missouri... all the states that have refused to do anything about fighting the spread of the disease, the ones that should be walled off if they don't get moving immediately.Iran let this get out-of-hand, exactly the way states like Arkansas, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas and Wyoming are today. This week state television warned that If people cooperate fully now, Iran will see 120,000 infections and 12,000 deaths before the outbreak is over; if they offer medium cooperation, there will be 300,000 cases and 110,000 deaths. But if people fail to follow any guidance, it could collapse Iran’s already-strained medical system. If the "medical facilities are not sufficient, there will be 4 million cases, and 3.5 million people will die."Further, Trump's emergency plan now includes "an emergency stimulus package that could send two $1,000 checks to many Americans and also devote $300 billion towards helping small businesses avoid mass layoffs... No final decisions have been made and talks with Republican leaders remain fluid."
The White House’s evolving spending plan could be unprecedented in its size and velocity, dwarfing the stimulus bill passed during the Obama administration and the Troubled Asset Relief Program passed during the Bush administration.The current $1 trillion Trump plan would seek to spend $500 billion towards the cash payments to individual Americans, though some people wouldn’t qualify if their income is over a certain level. The Treasury Department outline says the funds would be paid out in two equal amounts, beginning on April 6 and then again on May 18.“Payment amounts would be fixed and tiered based on income level and family size,” the Treasury letter said.The White House discussions with Republicans would aim to spend another $50 billion to help rescue the airline industry and $150 billion to prop up other sectors, which could include hotels, among others. Some Democrats have raised concerns about how these funds might be used and have called for putting restrictions on firms that receive emergency assistance to assure that employees aren’t laid off while executives pocket large bonuses.One of the goals of the White House’s decision to seek $300 billion for small businesses in the plan would be to help firms continue paying employees, as there has already been a wave of layoffs, particularly at restaurants and other companies where business was suddenly halted as millions of Americans began staying at home under government warnings about contagion....The package doesn’t, at this point, include some of the big tax cuts that President Trump had sought only a few days ago. White House officials pivoted away from the tax cuts after Democrats and Republicans largely panned the idea, and Trump expressed concern that it would take too long for these benefits to filter through to the economy.
By the way, did you read The Plot Against America, an alternative history novel by Phil Roth? I read it in 2004 and loved it-- and was certain it would be a movie one day. And... now it is. There was no political Donald Trump in 2004, at least not that most of us knew of. But the feelings of the movie really do seem to be all about Trump, even though you may have to imagine "the Jews" as "the immigrants." It premiered on HBO on Monday.
