So let’s see if I’ve got this right (I have):
A powerful Republican senator named Richard Burr – a member of the supine posse that exonerated Donald Trump in a sham Senate trial – knew well in advance, from private briefings in early February, that a life-altering pandemic was imminent and that it would likely tank the stock market. But instead of warning the public (because doing so would have contradicted Trump’s upbeat lies), he quietly sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, dumping between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings in 33 transactions.
But there’s much more. Even though he knew, from private briefings, that a hellscape was on the horizon, Burr was reassuring the clueless public (including everyday stockholders) that everything was just ducky and that our MAGA leaders had everything under control. On Feb. 7 he wrote on the Fox News website: “The United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats like the coronavirus…No matter the outbreak or threat, Congress and the federal government have been vigilant in identifying gaps in its readiness efforts and improving its response capabilities.”
But that’s the opposite of what he told a private luncheon of heavy hitters (a North Carolina club you can join for $10,000). On Feb. 27, the same day Trump was blowing his usual smoke up our backsides (the virus is “like a miracle, it will disappear”), Burr shared the truth with the insiders. After all, they’d ponied up big money to learn what the unwashed masses couldn’t know.
Burr told them, “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this (virus): It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history. It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic…Every company should be cognizant of the fact that you may have to alter your travel. You may have to look at your employees and judge whether the trip they’re making to Europe is essential or whether it can be done on video conference. Why risk it?…There will be, I’m sure, times that communities, probably some in North Carolina, have a transmission rate where they say, ‘Let’s close schools for two weeks. Everybody stay home.'”
So, to review: Burr knew privately how dire the forecast would be, did some insider trading before the Dow went haywire in order to protect his bottom line (while the average stockholder got soaked), stayed publicly in sync with Trump’s upbeat lies, and shared the truth only with fat cats that paid money to hear it. Oh, and one other thing: Burr is the only current Senate member who voted in 2012 against the law that bans insider trading by members.
What we have here, in other words, is the quintessential MAGA metaphor – a perfect demonstration of “the duplicity, graft, swampiness, and incompetence that marks both the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the GOP in the Trump era.” That quote comes from The Bulwark, a commentary website run by conservative Republicans who refuse to brandish the Trump armband.
And Burr had company. According to another new report, Senate Republican Kelly Loeffler received a dire private briefing in January – and on the same day, she began to dump millions in stock. And she somehow had the foresight (which the masses didn’t have) to invest in a firm that specializes in teleworking software. And all that time, she was publicly parroting Trump’s lies about how great things were going: “Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on Coronavirus readiness. Here’s the truth: Donald Trump & his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe.”
What can we say, at this point, about these MAGA leeches that are sucking us dry? Here’s Tim Miller, a Republican writing for The Bulwark:
“This is the story of what happens when you put a career scam artist in charge of the indispensable nation and he finds himself in a historic crisis. That’s on Trump and the voters who chose him. But the other half of the scandal is that the people in a position to stand up to Trump and protect the American people from the impending crisis were too worried about their pocketbooks, access, or Twitter mentions to do anything about it. This is a story not about Trump, but about the total and complete corruption of the Republican party itself.”
Richard Burr is not on the ballot this year. But the Republican party is.