"And now they know"

[babylonsister]

https://digbysblog.net/2020/03/and-now-they-know/?fbclid=IwAR312_NrWZHuPAXXvv72UDd1Y4KPxIrOk2aPtygaYH_tPXZm6vZt-6AcrbM


“And now they know”
Published by digby on March 22, 2020
What do they know now? How Trump would handle a crisis.


Haberman and Baker in the New York Times:

Mr. Trump’s performance on the national stage in recent weeks has put on display the traits that Democrats and some Republicans consider so jarring — the profound need for personal praise, the propensity to blame others, the lack of human empathy, the penchant for rewriting history, the disregard for expertise, the distortion of facts, the impatience with scrutiny or criticism. For years, skeptics expressed concern about how he would handle a genuine crisis threatening the nation, and now they know.

“When he’s faced a problem, he has sought to somehow cheat or fix the outcome ahead of time so that he could construct a narrative that showed him to be the winner,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer. “And when it was all about feuds with other celebrities or contests over ratings or hotel branding, he could do that and no one cared enough to really check. And the bluster and bragging worked.”

“But in this case,” Mr. D’Antonio added, “he tried that in the beginning and you can’t brag or bluster your way out of people dying. And I think more than the suffering, the human suffering, it’s been the inexorable quality of the data that’s forced him to change.”

Only after viral projections grew more dire and markets began to tank did Mr. Trump shift tone and appear to take the threat more seriously, finally adopting a more aggressive set of policies to compel Americans to stay away from one another while trying to mitigate the economic damage.

Any other president, and I mean any of them, even the worst, would have acted differently. This is the way in which Donald Trump is sui generis. Yes, his policies are generally pretty standard right-wing Republican and the overall trajectory of his presidency is pretty much what Mitch McConnell would have had on his wish list on January 20, 2017.

But it’s the deranged personality, the disorganization, the ignorance, corruption, and narcissism that sets him apart. Many presidents may have had elements of those traits. But never before have we had someone with that whole twisted package. And it’s in a crisis where that becomes a matter of life and death.

[empedocles]

1. How many 'know' ? How soon will many 'know'?

Key questions

[marybourg]

2. My Republican-leaning neighbor this morning:

“We didn’t know how bad he was.”
Me: We (N.Y.ers) tried to tell you. You wouldn’t listen”
Neighbor: silent

[Wounded Bear]

3. Aye, there's the rub...

apologies to Mr Shakespeare.

65 million of us knew. We knew.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Had A Similar Event

Not going to post the whole story again, but his last word was "Yeah, Trump fucked this up."

[coti]

5. And they had a chance to throw him out just a couple months ago nt

[CrispyQ]

6. There was decades of evidence of his incompetence, arrogance, and corruption,

for voters who wanted to make a decision based on intellect, not emotion. They have no fucking excuse. You were much nicer than I would have been.

[dalton99a]

7. Republicans knew he was a stupid lying sociopath

But they nominated him, voted for him, and refused to remove him

[Wellstone ruled]

8. So does this mean that Maggie

will not get misleading hand outs to rewrite as fact? Interesting to see this coauthored piece with Habberman's name attached.