Tuesday, March 31, 2020

White House Official Admits Trump Is Sending More Essential Medical Equipment To Swing States He Needs For Re-Election, While Consigning Many People To Death In States He Can't Win

Four days ago, I wrote that "a classic Trumpian move would be to send existing equipment to Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which (coincidence!) are key swing states in this November's election".

Well, guess the fuck what?

A White House official has admitted to the Washington Post that Donald Trump is making sure "red" states like Florida get all the coronavirus personal protective gear that they have requested, while denying essential equipment to "blue" states (like New York, which Trump has no chance of winning).
The federal response to this pandemic is based on Donald Trump's re-election campaign needs.

I'm dreaming, but what if the media sank its teeth into this and did not let go? What if every single question posed to Trump tomorrow was about this report?

WaPo:
Officials in Florida have pointed to the close relationship between [Republican Governor Ron] DeSantis and Trump as a helpful tool in shaping federal policy. The two speak almost daily. Trump has formed an especially close relationship with DeSantis, a former congressman whose pugilistic defenses of the president helped him secure a race-changing endorsement in his 2018 bid for governor. Trump will probably need the 29 electoral votes of his adopted homestead to win reelection.
Check out what happened last Saturday. DeSantis called Trump and complained that people with the coronavirus were traveling from New York to Florida. (Sure, that makes sense. I know anytime I'm running a fever and coughing and having trouble breathing, I find the best thing to do is get in my car and drive 1,200 miles for no reason.) Anyhoo, Trump hung up and immediately tweeted that he was considering a quarantine for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, as a punishment, I guess. (He ultimately decided against it.)

WaPo:
One White House official said Trump is attuned to the electoral importance of Florida in November, giving added weight to the arguments DeSantis has made to the administration that his state's economy should reopen as soon as possible. ... Three days after requesting 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators and other equipment on March 11, Florida received all of the items. The state received an additional shipment less than two weeks later. As of late last week, it was awaiting a third shipment.
The official added: "The president knows Florida is so important for his reelection ... He pays close attention to what Florida wants."

Also:
Trump also continues to push his nonsensical theory that doctors and nurses in New York City, after working grueling 14-hour shifts, are then selling boxes of masks "out the back door". This is merely one more shovel of dirt on the Mount Everest of evidence of Trump's ignorance and projection.

Dolt45 cannot conceive why so many masks would be needed (since the number of cases should be "close to zero" by now, plus April's warm, virus-destroying weather is arriving tomorrow) and he assumes everyone would do whatever he would do.

But because Trump knows he would happily step over a pile of dead bodies to sell masks on the underground market doesn't mean anyone else would. ... Who is buying these masks? And for what purpose? It's beyond bizarre. But it's been well-established that when Trump gets confused about why something is a certain way, his mind goes immediately to illegal action.
Hey! Halle-fucking-lujah!
That con job was built on the even-more-amazing magic conservatives conjured decades ago, when they convinced pretty much everyone in the US that the country's media is liberal. If you actually go and read and listen to the media, of course, you'd quickly realize the claim is hogwash.

In 1992, Rich Bond, then the chair of the Republican Party, said:
There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media] ... If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one.
James Baker, the White House Chief of Staff under both Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Herbert Bush, admitted that complaining about the media was silly:
There were days and times and events we might have had some complaints [but] on balance I don't think we had anything to complain about.
Patrick Buchanan, an ultra-conservative pundit and former presidential candidates:
I've gotten balanced coverage, and broad coverage-all we could have asked. For heaven sakes, we kid about the 'liberal media,' but every Republican on earth does that.
William Kristol, one of the most influential Republican/neoconservative in America, confessed:
I admit it. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.
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1 comment:

  1. allanWednesday, April 01, 2020 4:08:00 PM

    March 27, 2020:
    "I mean, you're hearing constantly about people leaving New York and going down to Florida."

    ***

    No, we're not. ... You heard it from the FLA governor on your phone call. And it's highly unlikely it's true anyway.

    ReplyDelete