Leave It To Trump To Turn Masks Into A Divisive Political Weapon To Kill Americans

Back To School With Betsy And Donald by Nancy Ohanian

There are 22 states without statewide mask mandates. How the hell is that even possible? Well, let's begin by pointing out that of the 22 states, 20 have Trumpist Republican governors, one (Wisconsin) has a cowardly moderate Democrat who got barked at by the Republicans in the state legislature and state supreme court so he announced he was "giving up" and one (Wisconsin) has a worthless conservative Democratic governor who served in Congress as though he was a Republican anyway. Several of the states have pandemics that are completely out of control and dangerous not just for their own states but for the entire country, if not the world. These are the states without mask mandates, along with how many new cases each reported on Monday-- and the number cases they have per million residents.

• Florida +10,347 (16,780 cases per million Floridians)
• Georgia +2,452 (13,711 cases per million Georgians)
• Tennessee + 1,639 (11,678 cases per million Tennesseans)
• Arizona +1,559 (19,946 cases per million Arizonans)
• South Carolina +1,459 (cases per million South Carolinians)
• Mississippi +1,251 (14,747 cases per million Mississippians)
• Ohio +1,230 (6,519 cases per million Buckeyes)
• Minnesota +903 (8,353 cases per million Minnesotans)
• Wisconsin +703 (7,388 cases per million Cheeseheads)
• Indiana +635 (8,497 cases per million Indianans)
• Missouri +603 (5,836 cases per million Missourans)
• Iowa +527 (12,441 cases per million Iowans)
• Utah +409 (20,769 cases per million Utahns)
• Idaho +393 (8,542cases per million Idahoans)
• Oklahoma +168 (6,427 cases per million Sooners)
• North Dakota +107 (cases per million North Dakotans)
• Nebraska +264 (11,811 cases per million Cornhuskers)
• Alaska +75 (2,664 per million Alaskans)
• South Dakota +37 (8,979 cases per million South Dakotans)
• Wyoming +61 (3,779 cases per million Wyomingites)
• New Hampshire +46 (4,596 cases per million Granite Staters)
• Vermont +10 (2,180 cases per million Vermonters)

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp demands to go down in history as the worst governor of all... by suing cities and counties that pass their own mask mandates. And just as Señor T finally tweets out a picture of himself in Lone Ranger drag! That was the day after he got the crap kicked out of him by Chris Wallace in the middle of the Trumpanzee heartland: Fox News. Wallace was gentle compared to what Maddow of Chris Hayes would have done but he landed punch after punch right in that ugly face, as we noted yesterday. It must've shocked more than a few Fox viewers. "One of the greatest frustrations President Trump’s foes have," wrote Aaron Blake for the Washington Post "is how infrequently he’s called out-- in person-- on his bizarre theories and his 20,000 falsehoods and misleading claims. While journalists fact-check Trump relentlessly, there are relatively few instances in which he has received pushback to his face, in part because it takes a certain deftness and, arguably in even larger part, because he submits to so few interviews outside the Fox News and conservative media bubble." But on Sunday Wallace called him out on his lies and gaslighting.

The president has for months lodged and repeated a series of false statistics and dodgy ideas about the coronavirus outbreak. And in a matter of minutes, Wallace cast a spotlight on almost all the big ones.

Trump pushed back on questions about the ballooning number of cases we face, as he often has, by wrongly suggesting that this was a matter of increased testing. Wallace noted that the rising test-positivity rate and the comparisons we see in most other countries-- particularly Western Europe-- show our situation is particularly bad.

Trump then reverted to his fallback-- the number of deaths we’ve seen-- and things quickly went off the rails for him.

When Trump claimed the United States had one of the lowest mortality rates in the world-- or even the lowest-- Wallace made him prove it. Trump couldn’t, because it isn’t true.

The below is a lengthy exchange, but it’s worth [watching] in full:





Or not. Not only didn’t Wallace claim the United States had the worst, but Trump didn’t prove the opposite either. Wallace cut to a voice-over.

“The White House went with this chart from the European CDC, which shows Italy and Spain doing worse, but countries like Brazil and South Korea doing better,” Wallace said. “Other countries doing better, like Russia, aren’t included in the White House chart.”

So not even the cherry-picked data that the White House furnished backed up Trump’s claim. (In fact, the U.S. mortality rate ranks on the high end of all countries, according to Johns Hopkins University.)

Apparently unchastened by this, Trump later decided to repeat another false claim-- and was again exposed.

Trump again claimed, as his campaign ads have, that Joe Biden wants to defund the police. In fact, Biden has said explicitly that he disagrees with that idea.

“Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders,” Trump said. “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”

But just as with the mortality rates, Trump promised proof that didn’t exist. As Wallace said in yet another voice-over, “The White House has never sent us evidence that Bernie-Biden platform calls for defunding or abolishing police, because there is none. It calls for increased funding for police departments that meet certain standards. Biden has called for redirecting some police funding for related programs like mental health counseling.”

Republicans have indeed tried to substantiate Trump’s claim by noting that Joe Biden called for redirecting police funding-- arguing that’s in line with the defunding movement. But even if you accept that strained argument, the proof Trump offered didn’t at all prove what he claimed.

The confidence Trump displayed in his false claims was truly something to behold. (“Ready?” “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”) The question has often been whether he truly believes his own hype or is just committed to the lie. Either way, Wallace laid it bare.

In between these rare live fact checks was arguably an even worse moment for Trump.

Trump has downplayed the coronavirus threat from the very beginning, but rarely has his dismissiveness been revealed so plainly. Trump continued to press Wallace on the metric he argues is most important, and he challenged Wallace to show a chart on deaths. Wallace noted that we’re seeing around a thousand per day, at which point Trump reverted to another fallback: blaming China.

“They should’ve never let it escape; they should’ve never let it out,” Trump said. “But it is what it is.”

It is what it is. With nearly 140,000 deaths. Expect that to feature in some anti-Trump campaign ads.

Wallace’s ability to reinforce Trump’s constant lack of specificity stretched into a conversation about schools. Wallace asked Trump what would seem to be a pretty simple question: He noted that Trump said schools are teaching students to hate America, and he asked where Trump was seeing that.

“Now they want to change 1492, Columbus discovered America,” Trump said. “You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that’s what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 Project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don’t even know."

The reference was to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which has been a lightning rod in conservative circles for its portrayal of slavery’s role in our country’s origins. Wallace quickly noted, “It’s slavery,” not redefining when our nation was founded.

“That’s what they’re saying, but they don’t even know,” Trump said. “They just want to make a change.”

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Wallace later raised Trump’s attacks on Biden’s sharpness, and when Trump trotted out his claims to acing a cognitive test, Wallace was ready. As The Post's Philip Bump has noted, the kind of test Trump has bragged about is remarkably simple because it aims to ferret out obvious mental impairments. Wallace noted that he can attest to this, because he took a similar exam.

“It’s not the hardest test,” Wallace said. He noted that one question asked him to identify an elephant by looking at a picture of one.

Trump then conceded that some questions are easy but then remarkably contended that some are difficult as the test goes on: “But I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions.”

Wallace shot back: “Well, one of them was count back from 100 by seven.” He began counting: “Ninety-three.”

In other circumstances, this could have come off as overly adversarial. But Wallace was putting his finger on the ridiculousness of the claim-- just as he had so many times previously in the interview.

These were the kinds of things that have been pointed out ad nauseam outside the audience of the president; Wallace just had the venue and the wherewithal to actually press him on them. And the result was something unlike we’ve seen thus far in Trump’s presidency.