The repeated warnings
It was in the daily briefing for weeks, but he never reads the daily briefing (or anything else), so oh well.
U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.
But the president has no attention, so his attention can’t be called to things.
For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.
But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.
Always with the normalizing. He never reads the PDB, and I bet he never shows patience for the oral summary either.
The frequency with which the coronavirus was mentioned in the PDB has not been previously reported, and U.S. officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.
In other words the kind of thing you really would expect a president – even a mediocre one – to pay attention to.
Trump spent much of February publicly playing down the threat while his administration failed to mobilize for a major outbreak by securing supplies of protective equipment, developing an effective diagnostic test and preparing plans to quarantine large portions of the population.
Sadly, playing it down didn’t succeed in making it go away.
I can’t think of any other president at least in my lifetime who would have ignored the warnings. They might have tried to downplay the threat, to resist making moves that would threaten the economy, but they would have at least been doing some things – trying to get PPE and ventilators for the states, at least. Warning people to keep distance. Maybe not shutting down, because again, it’s all about economy, but not this level of ignorance and apathy. Even the dimmest of them (a contest between Dubya and Reagan, but I think Dubya wins pretty easily) would have said or done something and both of them had people around them who were more intelligent and more politically savvy than they were.
Here’s the problem with running government like a business, particularly when the employee thinks he’s the boss. What happens to most employees who refuse to perform the basic tasks for which they were hired in the first place?
Unfortunately it’s even worse: Trump thinks he is still a tawdry “reality” TV star. He’s more concerned with his ratings than anything else, thinking good ratings will keep him on the air. Try as he might, though, he hasn’t been able to fire the virus, which took full advantage of the malign neglect he chose as his opening strategy. Trump seems to have missed the minor plot point of the cancellation by death of tens of thousands of extras/audience members/citizens. It doesn’t get any more real than that.
Well said, YNnB:
It might not get any more real, but it does get worse.. If Trump was in the military and abandoned his post or failed in his duty some way and with serious consequences like death of troops or civilians, he himself would likely face serious consequences. In a wartime situation, he could be court-martialled and shot for stuff like that.
But then again, he is actually in the military 24/7. He as President is its commander-in-chief. And he is in a wartime situation. It is just that the enemy is a swarm of viruses and not one of troops in uniform, or flying planes as at Pearl Harbor: a technicality that could save his hide in a military court. But that is the reality of this particular ‘reality’ show.
It’s a shame that so many people had to die because the PDBs highlighting the increasing severity of COVID-19 weren’t sufficiently larded with pictures of Trump. Perhaps if these reports had been couched in terms of how any inaction or delay on his part would make him look “bad” , and tank his ratings, (which is the only downside of a pandemic that could have possibly prodded his attention), then the death toll would have been greatly reduced. It’s almost right up there with having to sneak cauliflower into his mashed potatoes.
Oh, and Dr. Birx? Thank you so much for enabling, and covering up for this proudly, aggresively ignorant, murdering asshole. Fauci has put up a bit of a fight, (not enough as far as I’m concerned), but you became an accomplice. You went on television saying Trump was up on the details , reading the medical literarure (HA! As if!!), and understanding what was happening. You didn’t have to do that. You should not have lied like that to the American people, some of whom, god help them, probably believed you. Some of those deaths are on you.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944/3204068269611612/?type=3&theater