For The Trumpist Regime, Everything Is Falling Apart

Nothing seems to work. Trump tried negotiating an increase in oil prices but 3 days later they resumed their nose-dive-- as did the stock market (down another 2.4% yesterday). His regime has failed to deliver the emergency $1,200 checks that everyone should have had in their pockets almost a month ago. Betsy DeVos botched the $6 billion emergency funding for college students. And as Trump tells federal employees to prepare to come back to work, the number of confirmed infections shot up by around 20,000 overnight. A new YouGov poll shows that the "Fire Fauci" rallies that the Trumpist regime is promoting aren't working. 71% of Americans are more worried about lifting the restrictions too quickly, rather than too slowly (29%). Even 51% of Republicans say lifting the restrictions too fast are dangerous and that they oppose that. Most Americans-- including a plurality of Republicans-- oppose the Trumpist protestors.

California, which put social distancing rules in place early and entirely ignored Trump's ranting and raving, has just 30 deaths per million people. Compare that to states with governors who insisted on waiting and whose residents waited to take social distancing seriously:

• New York- 957 per million
• New Jersey- 493 per million
• Connecticut- 315 per million
• Louisiana- 285 per million
• Michigan- 248 per million

There are 9 more states with seriously increasing rates of infection that are likely to also show over 200 deaths per million in the next month:

• Ohio- 1,317 new cases yesterday
• Pennsylvania- 1,180 new cases yesterday
• Maryland- 854 new cases yesterday
• Georgia- 790 new cases yesterday
• Louisiana- 595 new cases yesterday
• Indiana- 476 new cases yesterday
• Virginia- 453 new cases yesterday
• Rhode Island- 384 new cases yesterday
• Florida- 346 new cases yesterday
• Iowa- 257 new cases yesterday

A new poll of Michiganders by the Glengariff Group for the Detroit Regional Chamber shows that Michiganders trusts their governor, Gretchen Whitmer considerably more than they trust Trump, who has been attacking her for her social distancing policies, which aren't even that strong and need to be tightened. Her approval on the pandemic is 57% with 37% disapproving. Only 44% approved of Trump's handling of the pandemic and 50% disapproved.





The Associated Press reported yesterday that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, that said that in terms of the pandemic "the worst is yet ahead of us... It has a very dangerous combination and this is happening… like the 1918 flu that killed up to 100 million people. But now we have technology, we can prevent that disaster, we can prevent that kind of crisis."

Stat's infectious diseases specialist, Helen Branswell, wrote yesterday about the magical thinking behind the inaction of the political class as China was being pounded by the pandemic in January and February, when Trump ignored it or made light of it. "Magical thinking-- you could call it denial-- hampered the ability of even some of the most seasoned infectious diseases experts to recognize the full threat of what was bearing down on the world," she wrote... "The virus, the thinking went, didn’t appear to be behaving as explosively outside of China as it had inside it. In hindsight, that argument, from a biological point of view, didn’t make any sense-- and it ignored a soon-to-be-apparent Epidemiology 101 lesson: It takes time for a virus that spreads from person to person to hit an exponential growth phase in transmission, even if every new case was infecting on average two to three other people. It wasn’t that the virus was behaving differently; we simply hadn’t yet seen what it was doing as it moved beyond China. When large outbreaks exploded in Iran and then Northern Italy in late February, the reality became abundantly evident. And then it was too late."

Some would argue that it was too late after January, 2017, when the orange slug-- a sociopath and narcissist, moved into the white House. Over the weekend, David Masciotra, wondered aloud, at Salon, why Democrats don't level with the American people about Trump's mental illness. "Trump," he wrote, "is the lunatic authority figure stalking and traumatizing the victims-- the American people-- while the Democratic Party, along with the mainstream media, act as the silent partner. It becomes increasingly evident, with Trump's every social media post, public utterance and policy directive, that our president suffers from a severe form of mental illness. His insanity threatens millions of lives, and has become particularly dangerous during the most devastating public health crisis in the last 100 years. For all the criticism that Democrats and pundits advance against Trump, their refusal to state the obvious forces the American public to feel as if we are the ones confined to a mental institution. It also emboldens Trump, even as he prioritizes his fragile ego, his compulsion to appear infallible and political expediency above the lives of countless human beings."

The most popular terms that Trump's opponents use are "liar," "un-American," "egomaniac" and "malignant narcissist." All of these labels are weak, which is why we watch as Trump peels them off like Band-Aids after a shower. Half the public probably doesn't know what "malignant narcissist" means, while "un-American" is too vague and ideological to have any widespread resonance. "Liar" quickly collapses into the "all politicians lie" refrain, and "egomania" is borderline meaningless, considering that almost anyone who becomes famous in our consumer society-- including most high-powered CEOs, Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes-- obviously have massively swollen egos.

...One recent morning-- again, while thousands are dying and the coronavirus ravaged numerous American cities-- Trump tweeted 46 times in a few hours, mostly to mock House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whine about "fake news" and retweet conspiracy theorists arguing for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

If any of our loved ones behaved in a similar manner, we would plead for psychiatric intervention. One does not have to have the expertise of a psychiatrist at the Yale University School of Medicine to make that assessment, but Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who indeed holds that title, recently told Salon that Trump's "pathological malice," "mental pathology," and "bottomless need to place his own psychic survival above any protection of the public" could "destroy the nation or the world."

...Even as rates of infection and the daily body count escalate, while overwhelmed hospitals lack the equipment to properly care for their patients and protect their workers, Trump displays a horrific failure to empathize with victims, place public need above personal interest or even acknowledge reality. He continues to tout the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which so far has shown little if any positive effects on coronavirus patients, and is known to increase the risk of cardiac arrest.

Trump makes decisions that threaten more lives, such as the elimination of U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, which is not only on the front lines against the global spread of COVID-19, but is also central to the campaign against treatable diseases throughout the developing world. He boasted of the creation of a coronavirus website in partnership with Google-- which does not exist and never will-- and has likened his presidential powers to those of a dictator, telling a report that "the authority of the president of the United States is total." (In an entirely typical Trumpian maneuver, he then retreated from that position without acknowledging he had ever said any such thing.)

Unlike other world leaders, who allow their chief medical officials to lead press briefings on the pandemic, the wannabe dictator hosts a surreal press conference nearly every afternoon. This has become a pathological national spectacle, in which Trump insults journalists, makes transparently false claims and answers simple questions, like "What do you say to the Americans who are scared?" with incoherent rage: "I say you're a terrible reporter."

In their cowardice, weakness and lack of imagination, the White House correspondents, the networks and publications they represent, and most Democratic officials offer a hideous illustration of "malignant normality."

Most journalists, adhering to an institutional decorum that might have been appropriate during the Carter administration, ask Trump a question and then dutifully take notes while he blusters through an illiterate response.

Lenore Taylor, an editor with Guardian Australia, offered a reasonable perspective on Trump last year that still eludes her American peers. After attending a White House press conference, she wrote that she realized "how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect," and concluded that most of journalism "masks and normalizes his full and alarming incoherence."

Major newspapers and television networks largely refuse to publish or air consideration of Trump's mental health, ignoring the consensus of hundreds of the most prestigious academics and doctors in the field.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was recently compelled to grovel before the Dear Leader, insisting that when he had said that earlier adoption of social distancing would have saved lives, he of course intended no criticism of the porcelain president.

For the sake of the country, millions of lives and everyone's sanity, some political figure of national prominence needs to respect the consensus of mental health professionals, and publicly declare that President Donald Trump is mentally unstable and unfit for office. This must be stated in the simplest terms possible, and while making clear that he or she is not joking or issuing the statement for dramatic effect. It is time to liberate American discourse from its self-imposed restraints, and it is essential to the future of American democracy that Trump's mental condition becomes a focal point of urgent investigation and discussion.

Shameless and dishonest operatives on the right have no reticence about making the health of a major Democratic figure part of public inquiry, even when they have to resort to baseless lies. In 2016, many Republican commentators-- from Sean Hannity to Trump himself-- warned that Hillary Clinton was near death, because she appeared wobbly at one public event. Four years later, she is still alive. Currently, discussions of Joe Biden's "dementia," without any clear evidence of cognitive decline, dominate right-wing chatter about the prospective Democratic nominee.

More than a thousand mental health professionals are now on the record declaring that Donald Trump is mentally unfit for office, but leading Democrats still refuse to discuss the issue openly. Amid this pandemic, Democratic cowardice regarding Trump's insanity goes beyond the usual liberal pattern of bringing a pillow to a knife fight. It puts millions of lives at risk.

No Democratic governor, even one with considerable power and influence like California's Gavin Newsom or New York's Andrew Cuomo, can afford to gamble with the health of his or her people by alienating Trump. But a prominent U.S. senator-- perhaps Chris Murphy of Connecticut or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts-- or even Joe Biden himself, must level with the country about what anyone outside Trump's cult following can see with their own eyes. The president is sick. It's time to talk about it.

A recent profile in the New Yorker of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quoted a staffer as claiming that behind closed doors McConnell has described Trump as "nuts." Democrats should demand to know if the Republican Senate mastermind truly believes that the president is impaired, and force McConnell to choose between yet more lies and the future of his country.

Democrats should also get over their concerns about angering Trump supporters. Anyone who continues to applaud Trump's weird and reckless disregard for humanity at this point is beyond the limit of rational persuasion. Trump supporters live in a hallucinatory dreamscape under the authority of a maniac. Let them have their anti-social distancing rallies, and allow them to believe that Barack Obama invented COVID-19 shortly after he was born in Kenya.

Rational Americans need to stop enabling this abusive and deranged presidency. Declare Donald Trump insane and, at long last, bring an end to our era of malignant normality.