Looking at it from a different perspective
Trump and co are mad at Fauci again.
The White House has accused leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci of playing politics days before the election in an interview about the coronavirus pandemic.
Oh lord. DARVO much? It’s not Fauci who “plays politics” ffs – it’s Trump and his worthless cohort. Fauci does epidemiology, Trump & Goons play politics. Fauci does his job, Trump lies and steals. Fauci tries to get the truth out, Trump tries to hide it under a billion tons of verbal garbage.
The US has recorded more [Covid] deaths and cases than any other country.
That’s not Fauci’s fault. It is Trump’s fault.
In his interview with the Post published on Saturday night, Dr Fauci warned that “all the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors.” “You could not possibly be positioned more poorly,” he said.
When asked about the approaches of the two presidential candidates, Dr Fauci said Mr Biden was “taking it seriously from a public health perspective”, while Mr Trump was “looking at it from a different perspective… the economy and reopening the country”.
That is, Biden is doing the right thing while Trump is not.
The comments drew a sharp rebuke from the White House, which accused Dr Fauci of attempting to bolster Mr Biden’s bid for the presidency. Spokesman Judd Deere said the comments were “unacceptable and breaking with all norms”.
“As a member of the [US Coronavirus] Task Force, Dr Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticise the president in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the president’s opponent,” he added in a statement.
Ah yes please do tell us more about “breaking with all norms.” Trump has broken more norms than Spokesman Judd Deere has had hot dinners, but please do tell us all about what a shocking norm-breaker Anthony Fauci is. Then pack your bags and leave.
Dr. Fauci is expressing concerns and pushing for a change in strategy – Trump’s strategy. He isn’t praising Trump to the skies, so he must be bad. He notices the difference between Trump and Biden, and wants to save lives, so he must be bad. He isn’t interested in making sure Trump Tower has more visitors next year, so he must be bad.
Time for a change in strategy; I agree with that.
Please remember, Trump may be speaking but it’s the entire republican field’s voices that we’re hearing. The lead asshole is the lead asshole because there are follower assholes. It’s dangerous to forget that. And worse, will law enforcement exist when the assholes on the ground start the trouble we all know they will after the election? Talking about Trump being an existential threat is like saying a hurricane has high winds and can do damage. It’s obvious and expected. In the case of trump and the republicans, it’s also meant, that is, it satisfies their wills. They mean to do the damage they do which at least a hurricane can’t. therefore, not worth the mention. You expect bad actors to perform bad acts. The only question that matters now is, will those that are supposed to protect the public from bad actors do just that? I know it has fallen out of favor to refer to the nazis but it would be helpful to read “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101” by Christopher Browning. Just the guys on the ground.
And it seems likely they will cause trouble no matter who wins. Whether angry or emboldened, they are dangerous.
Sounds like they’re making a case for firing Fauci if Trump wins
Not that Trump has so much as hinted at doing such a….oh, never mind.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/donald-trump-threatens-to-fire-anthony-fauci-after-us-election
I read the indications as showing that DJT will fire Fauci whether he wins or loses.
He can’t though. Fauci doesn’t work for him.
That is – he can remove Fauci from the task force, but not fire him from his CDC job.
zubanel @ 2 – it hasn’t fallen out of favor with me to talk about the Nazis. I do it often. They have a lot of lessons for us about what Trump & goons are capable of.
I’ve read Ordinary Men twice, and cited it here pretty often. Outstanding book.
I’m an outsider, looking in to the USA, but we have Trumpholes in Oz, too, you know.
And they all have one common denominator – denial of science. For them, science is political, not evidentiary.
DDT, CFS, Tobacco, Climate Change, Obesity, Helath Care, Abortion, all are seen through the lens of politics, all research is cherry picked for a minor flaw and then hammered like it is the only point in the research.
Those of us on the educated spectrum like to follow the evidence, prepared to change opinions as science gets better at defining, resolving, and predicting.
I used to argue with my Greenie friends over climate change, saying they had overhyped a minor issue. Trouble was, science supported them, not me. What did I do? I followed the science and conceded they were right. Trumpholes are incapable of this.
Good for you, Roj. There are things I’ve done that on, too (though not climate change; I was with that from the beginning).
And at least you didn’t do like Michael Shermer and the moment you (finally) accepted the reality of something that science supported, start acting like you were such a prime expert you needed to lecture everyone else, nor preen yourself on changing your mind based on solid evidence you had ignored for a long time because you were a libertarian and couldn’t stand the idea that there might be a need to control something.
Or, maybe you did, but I wasn’t around to see it. ;-)
No, I never claimed to be “special” because I learned something and put the knowledge into action. I do think that my initial climate skeptism has been useful since in evaluating new research, new arguments, and thinking “Now, if was still I denier would I …” and “With what I already know, how does this fit?”.
@Ophelia #7
Wasn’t this a possibility he got with that executive order he signed a few days ago? The one which allows him to remove people from public service directly before Jan 20th?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2020/10/28/trumps-executive-order-would-diminish-civil-service-employment-protections/?sh=c43eb947b3a5
O.k., just saw you had something on the possibility of firing Fauci later in the blog.
zubanel #2, Ophelia #7
Comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany should obviously not be used lightly, but to say that any such comparison is fallacious in principle is pretty much equivalent to saying that there is nothing we can possibly learn from the worst atrocities in history.
There is also what some people have called the “Historian’s Fallacy”, i.e. thinking, talking or acting as if people in the past had access to the same information we do about what happened later. E.g. it is fallacious to argue that the people who voted for Hitler in 1933 were worse than the people who voted for Trump in 2016 (or, for that matter, 2020) because Hitler later went on to start World War II whereas Trump hasn’t yet started World War III. This doesn’t get the former off the hook, though, since the information that was indeed available to them (Hitler’s speeches, his attempted coup in Munich, the ideas laid out in “Mein Kampf” etc.) should have been more than sufficient to tell them that this person should never be allowed anywhere near the reins of power. Likewise the information that was readily available about Trump four years ago should have been more than sufficient to disqualify him from the support of any sane and half-way decent person.
Indeed.
The core reason I think it is both permissible and necessary to bring up Hitler/the Nazis is the banality of evil aspect. I think it’s extremely relevant that Hitler wasn’t an obvious monster with dripping fangs, he was just an ordinary shitty guy. It’s not that Trump is actively planning genocide now, it’s that there’s absolutely nothing in him that would prevent him from doing so later. The fact that he’s a moral vacuum is important to understand and point out.