Toward the end of this past week, it became evident that the Republicans intended to use this horrific pandemic in order to force individual states into bankruptcy. Mitch McConnell, having worked to deliver hundreds of millions of our hard-earned tax dollars to corporations, said this past Wednesday that the states being hit hardest by COVID-19 would not be getting the same kind of bailout from the government. “We’re not interested in solving their pension problems for them,” the Senate Majority leader said, alluding to the financial crisis looming in America’s largest, most prosperous states, like California and New York. McConnell added that he was, “in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route.” This attitude of McConnell’s, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said just afterward, is “offensive,” “vicious,” “ugly,” and “reckless.” It’s also not terribly surprising.
If the Democrats held the White House and Senate, I’m sure, right now, we’d be talking about the possibility of instituting something like the Green New Deal, that might accomplish the dual positive results of putting people back to work, while, at the same time, finally putting our nation on the path to addressing global climate change in a significant and meaningful way. It’s deep in the DNA of politics to — in the words of Ram Emanuel — ensure that crises like this don’t “go to waste.” FDR used the great depression to give us the New Deal. The lesser Bush used the 9/11 attack to take us to war in Iraq. And, now, it looks as though the Republicans are using the coronavirus pandemic to once again raid the treasury on behalf of corporate America, shrink government and break public unions. And that’s exactly what this is about. When McConnell says, as he did a few days ago, that he doesn’t want the “federal government to borrow money from future generations” to bail he states out, when they could just go bankrupt instead, he’s not being sincere. If he were, he would have said the same thing when the airlines and cruise ship operators came asking for their bailouts, and when his own party chose to explode the deficit in order to paper over the failings of the Trump economy. The truth is, the want blue states to go bankrupt because they hate government, and want strong unions, like the teachers’ unions, to collapse.
And that’s what I wanted to write about today. I wanted to write about the longstanding Republican plan to destroy government and kill unions. But then Donald Trump came along and said that our scientists should look into ways to get light and disinfectants into the human body to kill COVID-19, and now I feel as though I need to at acknowledge it, seeing as how there are apparently people who, inspired by his remarks, are thinking about shooting-up Lysol… Here, before we get into it, is Trump extolling the possible virtues of introducing bleach and sunlight into the human body. This, by the way, is the best camera angle from the Trump press conference, as it captures the face of White House infectious disease advisor Deborah Birx when Donald Trump appears to sanction the possible use of bleach within the human body.
Trump, for what it’s worth, claimed yesterday that he was being “sarcastic” when he said what he did about finding ways to get sunlight and disinfectants into the body. “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen,” Trump said. That’s not what happened, though.
When Donald Trump said what he did, he was being serious. It’s evident from both the video and the transcript. He was attempting to sound as though he has a handle on this incredibly serious situation we now find ourselves in, and he got in over his head. He’d just heard Bill Bryan, the head of the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security, talking about research being done at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, research involving the killing of the virus with light, heat and disinfectants, and he — as he’s known to do — decided to freestyle a bit, just going off extemporaneously about the possibility of getting “light inside the body” and the likelihood that disinfectants might somehow be injected or ingested in order to “clean” out the lungs. A brighter president might have simply thanked Bryan, encouraged the work, and then expressed empathy for the families of the 50,000 dead, but Trump had to insinuate himself into the story by directing Bryan to take what they’d learned about the virus’s response to heat, light and disinfectants, and somehow figure out how to translate that into a treatment… Something like this, given what we know about Donald Trump, was bound to happen.
Donald Trump, feeling the need to look presidential going into the 2020 election, and having been robbed of his ability to hold his ridiculous rallies by the pandemic, had the bright idea that he’d hold daily press conferences, where he’d talk about how much he’d been doing for the American people, how we’d be reopening society soon, etc. The only problem is, he never had anything of real value to convey at these laughable press events, so he’d go off on tangents about how little credit he’s received, the extent to which the Obama administration was responsible, and the promise of untested miracle cures like hydroxychloroquine… which, by the way, the FDA just said was neither safe nor effective. And, on this particular day, the stars just happened to align in such a way that the President of the United States, a man extremely ill-suited for the job, even during the best of times, walked out on stage and appeared to suggest that people might be well-served by self-medicating with bleach… No, he did not stare directly into the camera and command his followers to drink Lysol. And no one is suggesting that happened. He did, however, broach the subject in such a way as to create a great deal of confusion, and make an already terrible situation worse.
This, or something like this, I’d argue, was inevitable. When you take a man like Donald Trump, who refuses to attend scientific briefings, but feels qualified to talk about what was covered during such briefings, these things are bound to happen. The truly criminal thing is that certain press outlets continued to cover these things well past the point when we all knew for a certainty that they were illegitimate. And, now, as a result, we’re seeing stories from places like Illinois and Maryland about people tying up public health offices with questions about the consumption and/or injection of bleach.
But, in Trump’s defense, this isn’t all that unusual. At least, I seem to recall a time or two, after Obama press conferences, were companies, like Exxon and BP, had to issue statements reminding people not to inject gasoline… I mean, it’s just something that happens. World leaders talk off-the-cuff all the time about the injection of things that would certainly kill you. And, yes, Barack Obama did once ask his chief medical advisors to look into the injection of gasoline to kill cancer.
OK, that’s not exactly true. Obama was actually pretty good when it came to not directing people to take their own lives. But he did once wear a tan suit. [#NeverForget.]
Oh, but here’s something that is real. At roughly the same time bleachgate was playing out, Dr Anthony Fauci, our nation’s foremost expert on the COVID-19 pandemic, said the following about our nation’s coronavirus testing capabilities. “We need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests, but the capacity to perform them…. I am not overly confident right now at all that we have what it takes to do that,” he said.
So, as funny as it might be that our president stood in front of the press and talked about the bleach and sunlight being forced through the bodies of the sick, the fact remains that we still don’t have the testing that we need. And every minute Donald Trump spends talking about potential miracle cures, are minutes he’s not spending actually doing his job, and pushing to expand the testing necessary to counter this pandemic.
Oh, and here’s that video of Trump claiming that his comments about disinfectants and sunlight were said sarcastically to the reporters in the room. [As you can see from the original video, he clearly wasn’t addressing the reporters in the room. He even addresses Dr. Birx by name when asking if it’s possible to get sunlight and disinfectant into the body.]
But this is what we signed up for when we elected Donald Trump. We knew he was a liar. We knew he was a shirker of responsibility, and a passer of the buck. We knew he wasn’t the kind of leader who would thoughtfully analyze problems, but would instead look for easy solutions. And today we’re paying the price. First it was chloroquine, and now it’s bleach. He apparently can’t admit to himself that there isn’t an easy answer. Because, up until now, there’s always been an easy answer. There’s never been a problem that he couldn’t make go away by lying, blaming, and buying his way out of. And here we are, with over 50,000 dead Americans, while he continues to stand in front of us, on live television, searching for easy answers, instead of doing the hard work of being president.
update: It’s now Monday, and Trump is back in front of the press, denying responsibility for people ingesting bleach. Welcome to the new America.