In these bleak times, we must cherish the rare moments of bliss. And it was indeed blissful early last evening when Donald Trump – for once – zipped his flapping lips and ceded the podium to people who actually know what they’re talking about.
If there’s any conceivable upside to the coronavirus, it’s surely the breaking news that even our most notorious anti-science dolt is capable of recognizing the value of experts and expertise. Granted, he’s wreaked a lot of destruction – jettisoning President Obama’s Homeland Security response team, firing the National Security Agency’s global response team, plotting huge budget cuts at the World Health Organization, slashing global health programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – but now that everything is getting real, he’s suddenly running to the public health specialists. Wonders never cease.
Nevertheless, at the hastily-called news conference, we still had to endure 10 long minutes of Trumpian babble before Dr. Anne Schuchat, the deputy director of the CDC, was finally awarded the podium. Some of his noteworthy babble went like this:
“I want you to understand something that shocked me when I saw it. I spoke with Dr. Fauci on this and I was really amazed, and I think most people are amazed to hear it. The flu in our country kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me…But think of that. 25,000 to 69,000. Over the last 10 years, we’ve lost 360,000. These are people that have died from the flu, from what we call the flu. Hey, did you get your flu shot? That’s something.”
Actually, I doubt that most people would be “amazed” to hear that. The fact that tens of thousands of people die each year “from what we call the flu” is fairly well known. Trump just assumes that most people are as stupid as he is. But look at the bright side: He learned a true fact from Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases…and he believes it! Every second spent learning something from a scientist is one less second spent retweeting Fox News.
At the podium he boasted: “We have the greatest experts really in the world right here.” If only he hadn’t devoted three years to undermining them. If only he hadn’t prompted a think tank task force, which included five current and former Republican senators and congressmen, to warn in a report last November that “the United States remains woefully ill prepared to respond to global health security threats.” If only he hadn’t warred against science and staffed his regime (in the words of ex-Republican foreign policy adviser Max Boot) “with ignorant ideologues chosen for their dedication to a supreme leader unconstrained by fact, logic, or morality.”
But at least now he’s woke. No more budget cuts to public health, presto! Republicans on Capitol Hill are suddenly willing to spend untold billions on this crisis. Trump said at the news conference, “We’ll take it, we’ll take it. If they want to give more, we’ll do more. We’re going to spend whatever’s appropriate.” Isn’t it funny how the Republicans, who are so steeped in anti-government ideology, suddenly opt to ramp up government spending when real life gets real?
And it’s progress, of a sort, that a so-called president who hates being contradicted allowed himself to be contradicted by people with actual expertise. During his podium riff, Trump said: “We’re rapidly developing a vaccine and they can speak to you, the professionals can speak to you about that. The vaccine is coming along well…We’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” Then the professionals had their turn. They said no such vaccine will be ready until next year, at the earliest.
One big question: Who’s actually in charge? Trump appeared to say that servile supplicant Mike Pence would be the point man for the entire anti-coronavirus crusade – the unofficial “czar,” as it were – but he also said that Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary, will lead the coronavirus task force. So will people be reporting to Pence or Azar? Trump’s response: “They’ll also be reporting in some cases to both.” He may be suddenly woke on science, but his organizational skills are a tad deficient.
However, he did reassure the American people that, crisis notwithstanding, he’ll still be the same toxic partisan they love and loathe. Asked by reporters to comment on the stock market, which plummeted 2000 points on Monday and Tuesday, he blamed it on…the Democrats’ Tuesday night debate. His time frame was wrong, but whatever: “The stock market is something I know a lot about…I think (Wall Streeters) take a look at the people that you watched debating last night and they say if there’s even a possibility that can happen, I think it really takes a hit because of that.”
His bottom line: “This ends – this is gonna end.”
Trump was referring to the outbreak. But I was envisioning 11:59 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2021.