Friday Talking Points -- We're Number One (Hundred Thousand)!

[ChrisWeigant]

[Program Note: I am pre-empting our normal column format today (as well as our use of the editorial "we" ) in order to make room for a straight-up rant. After finishing it, I don't think I've ever written such a lengthy one before, and after finishing I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the criminal incompetence and lies emanating from the White House in shameful fashion during the worst crisis of Donald Trump's presidency. Books will be written later about this monumental screwup, when we all have time to examine the many, many things that have gone wrong... and are still going wrong. But until then, I just felt the need to get this rant off my chest. You have been warned.]



We're number one! Well... number one hundred thousand and climbing, at any rate....

Yesterday, the United States of America took the lead on the world stage, but not in a good way. We're now the most-infected nation on the planet, and are now the number one epicenter of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Today, the number of cases in this country surpassed 100,000 -- a grim milestone indeed. We still have a ways to go before we are the country with the most deaths from the disease, but at the rate we're going that won't be long either.

What is really worrisome, at least for those who can read what the numbers are saying, is how fast we're increasing. With any exponential progression, what really matters is the rate of doubling. At the moment, the United States is doubling the number of cases every three days. So while we're on track to hit 110,000 or so today, three days ago there were only 54,856 cases. Three days before that, there were only 24,192 cases. This is truly frightening because if it keeps up, we're on track to hit over 400,000 cases by this time next week. The week after that, we could be getting close to 2 million cases. So far, that curve hasn't been bending in a good direction at all -- it's been rocketing up instead.

Perhaps the rise in cases isn't sustainable. Perhaps the social distancing is going to start to have an effect on the numbers. As I wrote earlier in the week, there's a lag time of more than a week between when people actually contract the disease and when they get entered into the statistics. So maybe next week will finally have some good news -- which, at the moment, would only be that the rate of doubling has begun to slow down a little bit. We'll see.

The other truly frightening thing about the numbers is that they may be severely undercounting the actual cases. So far, there just haven't been enough test kits to go around. They've had to be rationed. Even if you're sick, you can't get tested in many places unless you are actually hospitalized, due to the scarcity of the tests. This could begin to get better, as the tests are finally (finally!) being made more widely available, but up until this point supplies have been woefully inadequate. The governor of California announced just yesterday that only 66,000 tests had been performed in the state, but that of those 48,000 had no results yet because they had just been administered. That means only 18,000 had been given prior to this week -- which is quite obviously not enough in the most-populous state in the country.

Everyone trusts the governor when he conveys such important information, because he is honestly telling us the truth. Everyone trusts their governor in all the other states as well, one assumes, because the governors have been at the front lines and are providing the only honest leadership to be found in this time of crisis.

No one in their right mind trusts anything President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, or anyone else in the Trump administration is telling them -- with the sole exception being Dr. Anthony Fauci. This is because all we are getting from Trump and his minions are lies. Lies, damned lies, and faulty statistics -- we're getting them all by the truckload from Trump. What we're not getting by the truckload is anything they've promised to deliver. Which is why nobody believes all their happy-talk horse manure any more.

At this point, I don't even care if all the lies Trump is telling are conscious attempts to deceive, things he just doesn't know much of anything about, or just garden-variety ass-covering. It really doesn't make much difference anymore. The absolute vacuum of leadership at the top is approaching the point where it could be called criminal, in fact, and when things get this bad you really stop caring what his actual motive may be.

This all enrages me, and it should enrage anyone who can remember the lies that were being told just last week. Trump's inaction and inability to lead a one-car parade are becoming painfully acute, and they have directly contributed to the increase in cases. Let's run down the most egregious mistakes and lies we've had to put up with yet:



The worst lies yet

Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming, but now we know, and we know it can happen and happen again. And if it does, somebody is going to be very well prepared because of what we've learned and how we've done.

President Trump has used some form of this blanket excuse over and over and over again. But it is not true -- not by a longshot. Experts in the field knew it could happen, and they all told the Trump administration how serious a problem it could be. Trump ignored them.

Two stories put this into focus in stunning fashion, although I have yet to see either one of them mentioned by the talking heads on television, or asked about during one of Trump's now-daily press conferences. Here's the whole sordid story, from Politico (click on the link to see the full playbook that Team Trump totally ignored):

The Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus -- a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should've begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.

"Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?" the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. "If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?"

The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act -- all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.

"Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels" within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.

The playbook also stresses the significant responsibility facing the White House to contain risks of potential pandemics, a stark contrast with the Trump administration's delays in deploying an all-of-government response and President Donald Trump's recent signals that he might roll back public health recommendations.

"The U.S. government will use all powers at its disposal to prevent, slow or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat," according to the playbook's built-in "assumptions" about fighting future threats. "The American public will look to the U.S. government for action when multi-state or other significant events occur."

Got that? An easy-to-follow guide exists which tells the political leaders of our country exactly what to do and when to do it. It was utterly ignored, which led to losing two months of lead time that could have been used to fight the spread of the disease.

That's pretty astonishing stuff, which is why I wonder why nobody has even mentioned it on television or in the White House press room. But even more astonishing is that it wasn't even the only pandemic disaster preparedness effort that was ignored by Trump. Also uncovered by Politico was the following:

The Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its annual models of the havoc that pandemics would wreak on America's critical infrastructure in 2017, according to current and former DHS officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

From at least 2005 to 2017, an office inside DHS, in tandem with analysts and supercomputers at several national laboratories, produced detailed analyses of what would happen to everything from transportation systems to hospitals if a pandemic hit the United States.

But the work abruptly stopped in 2017 amid a bureaucratic dispute over its value, two of the former officials said, leaving the department flat-footed as it seeks to stay ahead of the impact the COVID-19 outbreak is having on vast swaths of the U.S. economy. Officials at other agencies have requested some of the reports from the pandemic modeling unit at DHS in recent days, only to find the information they needed scattered or hard to find quickly.

And while department leaders dispute that, others say the confusion is just the latest example of the Trump administration's struggle to respond to an outbreak that has sickened more than 50,000 Americans and threatens to overwhelm hospitals and other health care providers. Officials are now scrambling to secure enough masks, respirators and ventilators to meet the rapidly exploding need. Doctors and nurses are reusing their protective gear as supplies dwindle; governors are begging the administration for federal help that has been slow to arrive.

. . .

Some of the modeling unit's analyses looked at what would happen if a large portion of the U.S. workforce -- say, 40 percent -- got sick or couldn't show up at work to maintain and operate key aspects of the national infrastructure, such as the systems that keep planes flying safely. The reports were meant to guide policymakers toward areas that would demand their attention in the event of an outbreak.

One 2015 DHS report... warned that America's public and private health systems might "experience significant shortages in vaccines, antivirals, pharmaceuticals needed to treat secondary infections and complications, personal protective equipment (PPE), and medical equipment, including ventilators."

Got that? Ventilators. So two different agencies had created sophisticated models for how the country should react to a pandemic, and they were both ignored by the Trump administration. And, to add insult to injury (or perhaps to rub some salt in the wound -- choose your metaphor), Team Trump is still absolutely ignoring the one playbook they should be paying attention to, by "breaking every rule in the Center for Disease Control's 450-page handbook for a health crisis." No wonder their response has been so pathetic. Because, as always, Donald Trump refuses to listen to anyone who knows more than he does about any subject under the sun -- and that includes a whole bunch of smart people.

There are two other big lies worth highlighting right up front. The first came from Donald Trump, on March 6:

Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That's what the bottom line is.... Anybody right now and yesterday -- anybody that needs a test gets a test. We -- they're there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test.

This was not true three Fridays ago, and it is not true now. Everyone that needs a test still can't get a test, although the situation has improved in the past week. Even so, it's nowhere near even where Mike Pence promised we already were over two weeks ago, on March 9:

Over a million tests have been distributed... before the end of this week, another 4 million tests will be distributed.

That was not even close to being true when he said it, and it still isn't true. Just two days ago -- seventeen days later -- Mike Pence tried to brag that 432,000 tests have now been done nationwide. So it took two-and-a-half weeks to even get to half of what Pence promised had already occurred back then. As for "another 4 million," we're obviously nowhere close to that, even though the "end of the week" came and went two Fridays ago. Now, with Donald Trump you always have to wonder if he's intentionally lying or just ignorant as a bag of hammers, but Pence is smart enough to know when he's lying. And lying is precisely what he was doing, back then. I heard the surgeon general say this morning in an interview that "one million tests" had now been performed, but seeing as how he's been nothing but a toady for Trump, I simply don't believe him in the slightest. If Mike Pence lied about it back on March 6, why should I believe any of them now? I'll wait until I hear such a figure from someone trustworthy, like a governor or maybe Johns Hopkins University. Because the only thing you can trust from the Trump administration is that if their lips are moving, they are lying -- and most likely lying about critical issues that will lead to more deaths. This is why the phrase "criminal neglect" keeps coming back to me.



The callous indifference and inaction

Already, polling shows that 58 percent of the American people think Trump acted too slowly to combat the coronavirus outbreak. And they're right.

From the start, Trump has been playing catchup, and this has not been going well at all. The airlines -- on their own initiative -- halted flights to the epicenter in China very early on. Trump jumped on board this bandwagon and announced a "travel ban" for people coming from China.

However, this was a lie. There was no "travel ban" at all. There was a ban on non-Americans travelling from China to the United States. That's it. Americans were still allowed to fly back home. Here's a hint as to why this was pretty much like doing nothing at all: viruses don't check passports. Americans get infected in exactly the same way Chinese people get infected. So the "China travel ban" that Trump loves to now brag about was, essentially, ineffectual. A quarantine is only as good as its loopholes.

Trump doesn't seem to understand that he actually would get a lot more credit for his China travel ban if he had then sprung into action. He didn't. He dithered for over a month afterwards. In fact, he spent most of this time talking down the danger, at times even refusing to admit that it even existed. He brushed the whole thing off as nothing more than the flu. Exactly one month ago, he said: "It's going to disappear. One day -- it's like a miracle -- it will disappear." This was a lie, because it has obviously not miraculously disappeared.

Trump then swore up and down, over and over, that everything was "totally under control." Only 15 Americans were sick, Trump told us, and that number "would soon be zero." That was over 100,000 cases ago. Obviously, the virus was not "under control" in any way, obviously the travel bans did not work, and we're now quite obviously leading the world in infections.

This might not have been the case if Trump had moved more quickly on the issue of testing, instead of endlessly dithering. When the first cases arrived in America, there was already an existing test for COVID-19 which was approved by the World Health Organization and was being successfully used in dozens of countries. The Trump administration decided to create their own test kits from scratch. This delayed providing the tests for weeks, and then (even worse), the tests were faulty. Adding to the ineptitude, private industry wasn't called in to help until things had already gotten so far behind the curve that catching up was now impossible. As we can plainly see, from the fact that even today there are not enough tests to go around. So it wasn't just Trump himself who didn't take the coronavirus seriously, it was the entire federal government he controls.

Here's where we are now, according to what Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology expert at Harvard University wrote this Monday: "The United States currently has a sliver of the [testing] capacity we need, which is a tiny fraction of that available in other countries. South Korea has performed over 320,000 tests -- almost one for every 150 people. That is 30 times the testing per capita that we have done in the United States."

South Korea, interestingly enough, had their first coronavirus case detected on the same day we did. Their reaction was to immediately leap into action and open 600 test centers and 50 drive-through test centers. By acting so quickly, they avoided having to institute the social distancing that we're now experiencing. All the while, we were essentially doing nothing but listen to lies from Trump about how the whole thing was going to be no big deal. That is the difference between a country led by people who know what they are doing and one "led" by Donald Trump and his circus of clowns.

Trump was finally shamed into announcing a rather weak version of "social distancing," after multiple governors (from both parties) had already instituted such restrictions in their own states. But then Trump blew any advantage this might have given by utterly failing to provide the supplies necessary to successfully combat an infectious disease. There isn't just a critical shortage of ventilators, there is also a critical shortage of all the basic personal protective equipment (gloves, masks, gowns) that should have been provided by the federal government.

The experts were saying back in February that a million Americans could be hospitalized by even a moderate pandemic. But Trump did nothing. If he had utilized the Defense Production Act back then, we simply would not be where we are now -- we'd be in a lot better shape. But Trump has resisted doing so for weeks. He seemed to think using this power meant "nationalizing companies," which is not true at all. It means the federal government orders equipment and they are the highest priority customer -- they get all the factory can make. The feds then divvy up what is made and send it to where it is needed the most. This still has yet to happen because Trump is happy to see all the governors compete with each other over the limited supplies. This has reportedly driven up the price of N95 masks from pennies each to five bucks a pop. All of this could have been avoided if Trump had acted sooner. The governor of Illinois correctly said this was "like the Wild West." Senator Chris Murphy probably put this disastrous policy the best, though (after he told the president to "stop whining and tweeting and start acting," for good measure): "Today, we are in a Lord Of The Flies environment in which every single hospital and every single state is competing with each other."

Meanwhile, the White House forges ahead by just flat-out denying reality. Here's what they had to say yesterday, after reports began to appear in the media of doctors and nurses begging for equipment:

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator for the White House's coronavirus task force, said during a press update on Thursday that there was no "evidence" that hospitals were facing a severe shortage of ventilators.

As I sat down to write this, the news broke that Trump finally had used the D.P.A., to order General Motors to make respirators. But, like everything else in this fiasco, Trump had to be shamed into doing so. The New York Times reported yesterday that GM had been in talks with the Trump administration to make up to 80,000 ventilators, but that the deal fell through "after FEMA said it needed more time to assess how much the ventilators would cost." Trump was more interested in haggling over the price than he was with getting the ventilators made as quickly as possible. Because this was revealed, Trump was shamed into doing what he should have done weeks ago, and put the federal government in charge of at least one portion of the supply chain for hospitals.



The pettiness and ego-boosting

With Donald Trump, everything and anything is always -- always -- about one thing and one thing only: how it will affect Donald Trump. Period. Throughout the crisis, rather than showing the tiniest shred of leadership, Trump has been obsessed with how this is all going to affect his chances of re-election.

To Trump, the most important thing for anyone else to do -- any state governor, any medical expert, any of his toadies, bootlickers, or minions -- is to praise Trump with every breath they take. And Trump uses this as leverage, which he fully admitted this week on Fox News, when asked about several tantrums he's been having over what the nation's governors are saying about him: "It's a two-way street," Trump said. "They have to treat us well, also. They can't say, 'Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.'"

In other words, to get any attention from the Dear Leader, you absolutely must first kiss the Dear Leader's ass. This should outrage every decent human being in this country, but it's just par for the course for Trump. Trump just does not know how to behave like a decent human being, period. When told that Mitt Romney was self-quarantining last weekend, Trump responded with a sneer: "Gee, that's too bad." No, it was not sincere in the slightest. When he learned that Romney had tested negative, Trump's response was to tweet: "This is really great news! I am so happy I can barely speak. He may have been a terrible presidential candidate and an even worse U.S. Senator, but he is a RINO, and I like him a lot!" Trump wouldn't know what is expected of a decent human being if his own life depended on it.

Every time a governor (or anyone else, for that matter) dares to point out that all the promises from Trump and his team have proven to be nothing short of criminal lies, Trump attacks the messenger. The governor of Michigan was the most recent, although governors of Illinois, Washington, New York, Maryland, and plenty of other places have also found this out. Here's what Whitmer just pointed out:

Whitmer recounted that the most recent delivery of masks, gowns, face shields and gloves from the federal government's national strategic stockpile that was earmarked for a Michigan hospital on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis -- in southeast Michigan -- was woefully short of what is needed.

"With the exception of the gloves, that allotment is barely enough to cover one shift at that hospital," Whitmer said. "Not even a whole day's worth of shifts. One shift."

Officials in the Michigan governor's office tell me the situation is quite dire. They believe they need 400,000 new N95 masks a day for at least the next few weeks. Given how few have come in from the federal government, they've put out an order through other sources -- some international -- for millions of masks. Due to delays, they've received none of them.

Trump, of course, immediately attacked Whitmer.

Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington (the first epicenter of the disease in our country) apparently got tired of Trump encouraging the Lord Of The Flies competition between the states for supplies (where Trump says the federal government should just be the "backup" line of defense), and told Trump on a phone call: "We don't need a backup. We need a Tom Brady." But, obviously, all we've got to work with is a mentally-challenged waterboy, not a first-string quarterback.

Earlier, Andrew Cuomo got downright incensed after requesting 30,000 ventilators and getting only 400 from the federal government.

"The president said it's a war... then act like it," Cuomo said, raising his voice during a morning news conference at the Javits Center in Manhattan. "They're doing the supplies? Here's my question: Where are they?"

If more ventilators aren't sent within weeks, Cuomo told the feds, "You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die."

Cuomo went on to call on Trump to do what he finally (finally!) did today, to invoke the D.P.A. to get the ventilators, saying "not to exercise that power is inexplicable." He mocked Trump's insistence that he was using the power as "leverage" to get private companies to help:

"When we went to war we didn't say, 'Any company out there want to build a battleship?'" he said, mocking the federal government's current stance.

He argued business would welcome such an order.

"You know what business wants? They want to make money... let them open their factory and make money, help them do that by ordering the supplies you need," Cuomo said. "That's what the Defense [Production] Act was all about and at the rate they are going -- it is not happening. FEMA says we're sending 400 ventilators. Really? What am I going to do with 400 ventilators when I need 30,000?"

Trump immediately attacked Cuomo, because of course he did. It took many more days before Trump finally (finally!) used the act's power. In the meantime, a high-ranking official at the DHS was removed from her position because she was deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

In fact, there is only one man who even appears remotely trustworthy in the entire Trump coronavirus team, and that is Dr. Anthony Fauci. There was a scare this week, however, when all of a sudden he wasn't present at the daily briefings for a few days, right after an interview came out where Fauci pretty much admitted how tough it was to deal with the Toddler-in-Chief:

When asked Sunday by Science magazine's Jon Cohen about having to stand in front of the nation as "the representative of truth and facts" when "things are being said that aren't true and aren't factual," the 79-year-old said there is only so much he can do.

"I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down," Fauci said, referring to Trump. "Okay, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."

He was even asked about whether he'd be fired for saying stuff like this, and he correctly pointed out that the Trump administration would lose their one remaining shred of believability if it happened:

"I don't think they're going to try to silence me. I think that would be foolish on their part," he said. "I think, in some respects, they welcome my voice out there telling the truth. I'm going to keep doing it. And no matter what happens to me, I'm going to keep doing it."

What we've lost

We've lost a lot of time, while Trump dithered. That time could have been spent getting ready, but instead Trump spent most of it telling everyone that this wasn't a big deal and he had it "totally under control." Neither is true. We're going to lose a lot of lives because of this criminal negligence. A lot more people are going to get sick as a direct result.

But it's not only what we're losing here at home. We're also losing our status as a world leader. Here is how the rest of the planet now sees us:

Planeloads of Chinese medical equipment, masks and protective gear have been landing in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Iran and Iraq, among others. Jack Ma, China's wealthiest man, donated test kits, masks and protective suits to each of Africa's 54 countries.

African heads of state took to social media to profusely thank him, and headlines of major newspapers gushed with gratitude. "The perception across much of the continent today is that the Chinese are stepping up to deliver the kind of public goods that the U.S. used to provide," said Eric Olander, the director of the China-Africa Project

. . .

"In international crises, America has always been the country to which other countries have turned for leadership and to steer the ship. And now, which country is looking to the United States? No one," said Elisabeth Braw of the London-based Royal United Services Institute.

. . .

Meanwhile, the chaotic American response to the spread of the virus in the United States is undermining its reputation as a global leader in science and technology. TV footage of New Yorkers queuing in the cold for scarce virus tests has been broadcast worldwide, accentuating the sense that America can't manage its own coronavirus epidemic, let alone lead other countries out of theirs.

American enemies have seized the opportunity to take digs. "Spend it on yourself," said Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as he rejected an offer of U.S. assistance to help Iran fight the coronavirus. "You have shortages yourself."

Ouch. That's pretty sad, but that's where Trump's abysmal failure to provide even the pretense of leadership has left us. Even worse? Hope Trump doesn't hear about this one:

Mexican protesters blocked a port of entry that connects Nogales, Ariz., with Nogales, Mexico. They expressed worries that U.S. travelers could bring the pandemic into Mexico and demanded more screenings on traffic from the U.S.

Got that? The Mexicans are trying to shut down their border to prevent us from entering their country. Hoo boy. Like I said, hope Trump doesn't hear that anecdote.

You know what message we're sending to the world, instead of providing leadership? That all Trump is interested in is the blame game. Here's how a recent meeting of the foreign ministers of the G-7 went:

Meeting by video conference because of the outbreak, the ministers agreed on the need for joint efforts to halt the spread of the virus, known as COVID-19. But U.S. and European diplomats said the ministers were unable to agree on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's call for COVID-19 to be identified by name as the "Wuhan virus."

As a result, just a day after G-7 finance ministers and central bankers issued a joint communique referring to "COVID-19," the foreign ministers opted against releasing a group statement.

That is what we're losing. Being taken seriously on the world stage. The world used to just be laughing at us, but it's even worse now because they are reduced to pitying us.



Conclusion

America needs leadership in times of crisis. We are not getting it now -- not even close. We are instead getting petulance and indifference and lots and lots and lots of outright lies. Trump lies about things both great and small. He lies about current things and history. He could learn the actual facts in an instant, by calling any number of experts up to get his story straight. He doesn't bother to do so because he is incapable of correctly learning new facts. On Fox News this week, he was asked about the last major pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 100 years ago. This is how he responded:

Excuse me, just one second. You can't compare this to 1918, where close to 100 million people died. That was a flu -- it's a little different -- but that was a flu where if you got it, you had a 50/50 chance or very close of dying.

That's not even close. Estimates vary (record-keeping was rudimentary back then), but they range from a 2.5 percent death rate to perhaps 10 percent from the Spanish Flu. To put it another way, that is between a 1-in-40 chance of dying and a 1-in-10 chance of dying. Neither one is anywhere near "50/50." This is a basic fact that anyone can discover in about five seconds spent online, but even though Trump is surrounded by medical experts, he hasn't bothered to either listen or retain the truth. This is but one small example of his callous indifference to reality, but it is pretty representative of his entire approach.

And, of course, the rest of his team takes their cues from the boss. Steve Mnuchin responded to the news that at least 3.3 million workers filed for unemployment last week by brushing it off: "I just think these numbers right now are not relevant, and you know, whether they're bigger or smaller in the short term." Not relevant. Got it. This is so far away from "I feel your pain" as to not even be in the same moral universe.

Trump doesn't feel anyone's pain but his own, period. He's now pushing to get the whole country open again in time for Easter, because as a showman he can't resist the imagery (of "packed churches" as he put it). He doesn't really care if this means that tens of thousands more people get sick, or thousands more die. And the rest of the Republican Party just rolls right along, insisting that grandma and grandpa should just make the sacrifice of possible death in order to get the stock market ticking up again. This, from the political party that makes such a honkin' big deal about how deeply they care about "the sanctity of life," mind you.

However, luckily not everyone is a GOP toady willing to sacrifice anything -- or anyone -- just to improve Trump's chances of being re-elected. Trump is not showing leadership at all during this crisis -- he's doing whatever the opposite could be called. In direct response to Trump's irresponsible call for everyone to get the economy moving again, a whopping 800,000 doctors just signed a letter begging him not to prematurely end the social distancing.

And, as they used to say in advertisements, 800,000 doctors can't be wrong.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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