News flash: Donald Trump has reportedly “expressed concern that aides contracting coronavirus would undercut his message that the outbreak is waning and states should begin reopening.”
Gee, ya think?
The virus is now calling from inside his house – his food valet, his vice president’s flack, multiple Secret Service agents – and it’s forcing key task force members, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, to flee the premises. This prompts an urgent, fundamental question that even Trump should be able to grasp:
If the White House, with its vigilant testing and hygienic cleanings, can’t keep the virus at bay, how can any workplace or business safely reopen and protect the average citizen?
It can’t. That much is obvious, at least to anyone with more working brain cells than the dolt-in-chief.
And the guy has impeccably incompetent timing. This weekend, as word spread that the virus had spread inside his premises, this is what he tweeted: “So great to see our Country starting to reopen again!”
We’re entering yet another dangerous phase of the dystopia. With the body count rising to 80,000 and hurtling toward six figures, Trump is in full denial. He says it’s time for us to leave home and start returning to normal – at the precise moment when the White House, in a memo, is telling its own employees to “practice maximum telework” and “work remotely if at all possible.” That includes (among others) Dr. Fauci, Food and Drug chief Stephen Hahn, Centers for Disease Control chief Robert Redfield, and Trump henchman Stephen Miller.
So much for Trump’s carnival barker message. The virus doesn’t care what he says. And the virus exposes his hypocrisy: He wants to “reopen” America and thus encourage closer human contract – yet now that the infections are inside his house, he reportedly “has been growing irritated with people who get too close to him.”
Remember, he’s way more concerned about people getting too close to him, than he is about people getting too close to you. He’ll sacrifice as many people as necessary, in his bid to goose the economy, if he thinks it’ll help him stay in office.
But aside from the Trump cultists and “freedom”-lovers who are dying to buy a blouse or manicure their nails, common-sensical Americans aren’t likely to follow his diktat. Why should we feel inspired to reopen workplaces and businesses at a time when Kevin Hassett, one of Trump’s economic advisers, is on TV describing the White House as “a scary place to go to work”? Why should we feel confident leaving our homes when Hassett is telling CBS News “that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home”?
Yes, the White House is “a scary place to go to work” – despite the fact that its workers are now being tested daily, contract-tracing is now being conducted, and a memo says that the building is getting “heightened levels of daily cleaning.”
Well, isn’t that nice. It’s one standard for Trump’s abode,, a lower standard for the rest of us. All the places where Trump wants us to go – restaurants, offices, retail stores, his golf clubs – don’t have the resources to do daily testings, cleanings, or contract tracings. If Trump hadn’t fatally screwed up testing for the masses (and screwed up the mask supply), perhaps we’d have more confidence in his pitch to reopen. But alas, we’re on our own. Don the Con has embraced Darwin.
And Joe Biden asks a good question today: “If Trump and his team understand how critical testing is to their safety – and they seem to, given their own behavior – why are they insisting that it’s unnecessary for the American people?” (Trump has indeed said that mass testing is “unnecessary,” the precise opposite of what his health advisers, now quarantined at home, have long insisted.)
Mark Meadows, the former right-wing congressman currently serving as Trump’s latest chief of staff, sought this weekend to reassure the American people that the White House, with its daily testings, contact tracings, and heightened cleanings, “is probably the safest place that you can come to.”
Good for them. But the rest of us should work and shop and congregate in places that can’t daily test and trace? I don’t think so.