Foreign Correspondent: Washington’s COVID-19 Blame Game-- Trump Team Officials Are Seeking To Distract Attention From Their Own Pitiful Performance.

-by Reese Erlich
@ReeseErlich

The Republican Party is trying to shift blame for President Donald Trump’s disastrous coronavirus policies onto China. Chinese communists, Republican leaders claim, hid the pandemic from the public, allowing it to spread worldwide.

Trump has even given credence to the conspiracy theory that China intentionally developed the virus in order to kill Americans.

Scapegoating China serves a twofold purpose: It distorts China's actual progress in combating the pandemic and aims to help Trump get re-elected.

“Trump has always been successful when he’s had a bogeyman, and China is the perfect bogeyman,” Republican strategist Chris LaCivita tells the New York Times.

Unfortunately, many top-level Democrats, including the party’s presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, are competing with Republicans on who can bash China harder.

“Trump rolled over for the Chinese,” a narrator intones on a recent Biden campaign ad, “Trump praised the Chinese fifteen times in January and February as the coronavirus spread across the world.”

The bipartisan China bashing is one more indication of the decline of the U.S. empire. China has quickly grown to be the world’s second largest economy and is now pulling through the pandemic in far better shape than the United States.

As of April 22, China had more than 82,000 coronavirus cases and more than 4,600 deaths, and had gone six consecutive days without a COVID-19 death. The United States, a country with about one-fourth China’s population, had nearly 850,000 cases and more than 47,000 deaths. (While China has been accused of undercounting its casualties, so are most countries in the world, including the United States, according to a survey in the New York Times.)

Trump is just playing “political tricks,” says Andy, a Mandarin language teacher in Shanghai, who asked that his last name not be used to protect his safety. “Trump and his officials knew how serious the virus was. It’s their own fault.”

How epidemic began

The first COVID-19 death appeared in the city of Wuhan on November 6, 2019, according to a timeline constructed by pro-China blogger Nathan Rich. But doctors assumed the death was from pneumonia. By December, a few more residents were hospitalized in Wuhan. But it wasn’t until December 26 that local doctors discovered what they thought was a variant of SARs, the deadly virus that swept through Asia in 2002-03. It was actually the coronavirus.

On December 31, medical officials notified the World Health Organization about the existence of the new virus, and Chinese TV first reported the outbreak. On January 1, authorities closed the live animal market in Wuhan, which was suspected of being the virus’s origin point and had become a hotspot.

Chinese scientists initially thought the virus couldn’t be transmitted between humans, but on January 15, they confirmed that it could.

By January 23, China’s central government ordered a total lockdown of Wuhan, followed quickly by quarantines in other major cities. Residents were not allowed to travel in or out of Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. They were restricted to their own homes and even had food delivered. It was the largest cordon sanitaire in world history, according to a definitive study in Science magazine.

In retrospect, local authorities should have moved more quickly to identify the new virus and impose a quarantine. On January 19, for example, tens of thousands of people participated in a Wuhan municipal potluck dinner, which helped spread the virus. They should have recognized much sooner  that the virus spread human to human.

However, when it comes to dealing with the pandemic, the United States’ record is far worse.

Here, the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Seattle on January 21. But officials in   Washington State didn’t declare a state of emergency for another month (February 21), and it took California two months (March 19) to order people to stay at home. To this day, some states have still not declared stay-at-home orders, and the virus continues to spread.

China has surely engaged in some reprehensible behavior while combating the pandemic. A doctor who originally warned friends about the new virus was forced to sign a letter recanting his claim; he later died of COVID-19. Africans living in China complain of evictions and other acts of racism due to government warnings that foreigners may carry the coronavirus.

But from an overall public health perspective, China’s actions, according to the study in Science, saved many lives. “The national emergency response appears to have delayed the growth and limited the size of the COVID-19 epidemic in China, averting hundreds of thousands of cases by February 19.”

U.S. launches attacks

The U.S. government and mainstream media attacks against China began almost immediately. At first, China was criticized for not doing enough to stem the epidemic. Then it was accused of going too far and violating civil liberties. Meanwhile, Trump and his acolytes at Fox News claimed the virus was no more serious than a normal flu.

This week, two U.S. states, Missouri and Mississippi, filed lawsuits against China, alleging that the nation failed to take appropriate actions to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Send in the clown

China-bashing has even spread to popular culture. HBO comedian Bill Maher insists on calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus.” On his weekly show aired April 17, the sometimes liberal, sometimes libertarian comedian insisted that advocates of political correctness were preventing use of a perfectly appropriate name.

“Scientists, who are generally pretty liberal, have been naming diseases after the places they came from for a very long time,” said Maher, citing examples of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and Ebola, named after the Ebola River.

While some diseases are named after locations, others are not. SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and then there’s H1N1, or the swine flu. Interestingly, the infamous “Spanish” flu of 1918-19 did not originate in Spain. U.S. press censorship prohibited coverage of the flu, which in the U.S. began at an army base. Because Spanish newspapers were the first to cover the pandemic in depth, people assumed it began there.

The Trump Administration is promoting a similar shift-the-blame tactic, promoting the use of the term “Chinese virus” and advising State Department officials to accuse China of orchestrating a cover-up. “Everything is about China,” one official told the Daily Beast. “We’re being told to try and get this messaging out in any way possible.”

I pity U.S. diplomats forced to defend the Trump Administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus. We’re a rich nation with the most powerful military in history. Yet we can’t protect our own people in a health emergency.

Big Day For Señor Trumpanzeer Yesterday

Good day for Trump yesterday? High ratings, certainly. Not ratings about quality-- rating as in eyeballs. But that's what he cares about. His UN thing (at the bottom of the post) was a doozy and that hour and a half long rambling vaudvillian press conference (above)... oy veh. Bragging, lies, bullshit...

It's hard to watch him, to listen to him. It makes me sad for our country, especially that thing at the UN, the best part of which being when the world's leaders just laughed at his campaign-mode crap. Seth Meyers was better:



Everybody who fact checks, fact checked his press conference. The one from NBC News highlighted eight lies:

1. Asked if he rejected a one-on-one meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump said, "Yeah, I did."

Nope. A press representative for the Canadian prime minister told NBC News in an email that no such meeting was requested.

2. Trump claimed President Barack Obama "wasn't big on picking judges. When I got here I said, 'How was this possible?' They just didn’t do it-- they got tired, they got complacent."

Here's what actually happened: Republicans blocked dozens of Obama's judicial nominees, including a Supreme Court pick. That left Trump with 103 court vacancies-- nearly twice the number Obama inherited in 2009.

3. Speaking of the American embassy in Jerusalem, Trump said, "We got (the embassy) open in four months, for less than $500,000, and the budget was over a billion dollars. So we saved, let’s say a billion dollars."

His numbers are off. Trump is describing modifications to an interim embassy, according to reports; the project is still ongoing and will cost more than half a million. The State Department has reportedly already awarded $21 million in contracts for the upcoming renovations.

4. The president said he was falsely accused of sexual misconduct by "four or five women" who made "stuff up about me."

Actually, 13 women have accused him of sexual misconduct in the past and provided corroborators or witnesses, according to a tally by the Washington Post, while The Guadian reports there are 20 accusers.

5. Asked why the White House did not order the FBI to investigate sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh, Trump said: "There was nothing to investigate from at least one standpoint. They didn't know the location, they didn't know the time, they didn't know the year."

There are more details than Trump suggests. It's unclear which of the several accusers he is referring to, as the first woman to come forward, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, gave the year she says the alleged attack occurred, while another, Deborah Ramirez, provided the name of a college dormitory.

Ford says Kavanaugh attempted to sexually assault her during at a house party in a Maryland suburb in the summer of 1982. Ramirez said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at the Yale University dormitory Lawrance Hall during the 1983-84 school year. Julie Swetnick accused Kavanaugh of getting women intoxicated so they could be attacked by groups of men between 1981 and 1983 at house parties in the Washington suburbs.

6. Trump disputed one of his own sexual misconduct accusations by saying it was unlikely to have occurred because he had a best-selling book out that same year.

Let's get a calendar. He is referring to the allegation from Jessica Leeds, who the New York Times reported said Trump touched her inappropriately in the early 1980s on a flight. Trump's campaign later put forward a witness who said he was on the flight and sitting across from Leeds. He disputed her account, and dated the flight to either 1980 or 1981. Trump's first book, "The Art of the Deal," was published several years later, in 1987.

7. "I got 52 percent with women. Everyone said this couldn't happen,” Trump said.

The president is exaggerating the percentage of women who voted for him in 2016. He won 42 percent of women in the 2016 election, not 52 percent, according to NBC News exit polling. He won 53 percent of white women.

8. Those in the audience who laughed during Trump's big United Nation General Assembly speech this week "weren’t laughing at me, they were laughing with me. We had fun. That was not laughing at me."

See for yourself. Here's the video:

This morning, Todd Purdum noted at The Atlantic that Trump's Surreal News Conference Didn’t Do Kavanaugh Any Favors, portraying "Kavanaugh’s Democratic Senate opponents as the organizers of a 'big, fat con job,' then acknowledged without missing a beat that he would withdraw Kavanaugh’s nomination 'if I thought he was guilty of something like this, sure.' He praised Kavanaugh as 'one of the highest-quality people that I have ever met,' then suggested that the judge’s life was not so spotless, allowing that even George Washington may have had 'a couple of things in his past.'

Is Trump lying, or unintentionally revealing some deep-seated truth about his nature? Surely, the answer is both. Is he being reasonable about Kavanaugh’s accusers (“They’re going to have a big shot at speaking and making their case”)? Or disingenuous (“I can’t tell you whether or not they’re liars until I hear them”)? What does he really think? It changes from minute to minute. Does he contradict himself? Of course. Like Walt Whitman, he is large (or is it huge?). He contains multitudes.

In just over an hour, the president undermined the frantic work of his own White House aides and Senate Republicans, who have been scrambling for days to salvage Kavanaugh’s nomination-- most recently by releasing copies of the judge’s appointment-calendar pages from his Summer of ’82 that list no party like the one where Ford alleges Kavanaugh assaulted her-- by confessing that he regards allegations of sexual misconduct as inherently suspect because of what he considers the spurious claims (by at least 19 women) against him.

“It does impact my opinion,” he said. “You know why? Because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. I’m a very famous person. Unfortunately. I’ve been a famous person for a long time. But I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. Really false charges.” He added: “People want fame, they want money, they want whatever. So when I see it, I view it differently than somebody sitting home watching television where they say, ‘Oh, Judge Kavanaugh, this or that.’”

Trump’s disjointed, incoherent performance ignored the carefully disciplined strategy of the White House and Senate Republicans to plow through the growing swirl of allegations against Kavanaugh and press for a quick confirmation vote. His insistence that “You know what? I could be persuaded” by Ford’s testimony was hardly a ringing endorsement of Kavanaugh, whom in another breath he called “a great gentleman, a great intellect, a brilliant man.” The president’s equivocation-- fleeting though it may have been-- may also reflect the reality that crucial Republican votes like Senator Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska have publicly wavered in recent days.

The cloud of dust kicked up by Trump’s all-over-the-map arguments in no way clarified a fast-moving situation that is already cloudy enough. In addition to the accusations of sexual misconduct cited by Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, it emerged late Wednesday that another woman had reached out anonymously to members of the Judiciary Committee and reported that her adult daughter had witnessed an intoxicated Kavanaugh throw another woman aggressively and “sexually” against a wall outside a bar in Washington in 1998. Kavanaugh denied the allegation in an interview with a committee investigator.

Barbra Streisand actually released a song today for Señor Trumpanzee! It's good too. Listen:

Paul Ryan (R-WI) May Be A Clueless Ignoramus But The Media's Buying-- And So Are His Conservative Colleagues

-by Dave Sherbula

Since apparently no one in the Obama administration wants to call out Rep. Ryan on his lies, I guess it is up to me here at DWT.

His recent Racine Journal-Times op-ed is so far removed from reality as to almost be funny. But it is not. Because Darth Ryan is the Chosen One. Like Damien in the movie The Omen. He is being groomed. The Republican Party is thin on talent. Darth has been a shining star in the minors. They want to bring him up to the Big Leagues.

The next Ronnie Ray Gun.

I try not to make baseless statements like Darth Ryan. So let's dissect his op-ed.

Quoth Darth, "Obama's policies have made the situation worse in Southern Wisconsin." OK, I'll bite. How? No facts to back it up. I bet the GM workers in the Janesville plant he turned his back on when GM closed it appreciated the previous extension of unemployment benefits. That he won't support now.

He is right, jobs are scarce and credit is limited. 

How about calling your buddies on Wall Street and demanding they make loans instead of gambling with taxpayer bailout money you voted to give them?

Oh, that's right, the ROI on lending sucks. Gambling can pay well. If you win. And if you lose, Rep. Ryan will be there to help you through your hard times. If you are a Wall Street banker.

Out of touch Darth claims you can't take from the productive sector of our economy, funnel it through Washington and create jobs and prosperity. Does he even believe this? Explain to me what the productive sector of our economy is.

It obviously can't be Wall Street. They created this disaster. And don't produce anything, other than more campaign contributions for him than for any other House member from Wisconsin in history, including more than for Members who were already in Congress when he was still wearing diapers. We have lost millions of manufacturing jobs. That's not very productive.

I guess he means Congress. 535 well-paid producers.

He whines on about the President's health care plan. You know, Government Insurance. But can't cite any relevant facts. Except he doesn't want to pay for poor people's health care. Too expensive.  Wouldn't be prudent. Unsustainable! I can't seem to find anywhere how Darth turned down his government heath care for Janna. Lisa, Charlie, Sam and himself out of principle and purchased it in the private market.

He loves to rant about Liberal Special Interest groups. 

How about the Conservative Special interest groups?

Hello, Wall Street. It's Rep. Darth Ryan calling. Have you got a minute? I'm catching some heat, and you know, a small donation can go a long way to help me out, wink, wink.

Rep. Ryan's Roadmap for America's Future is a path to disaster for the middle class. 
He does not represent the constituents of his district. He represents Wall Street and Corporate America. He is their Manchurian Candidate...

And now this clueless empty suit with a ton of Wall Street cash is running back and forth across the country campaigning for more apparently clueless Republican candidates and collecting chits to cash in another day, encouraging Republicans like Ken Buck in Colorado, who admits Ryan is one of his economic gurus and said, "We should not be giving people money when they are fit to work and do not find jobs.” 

Or Sharron Angle in Nevada, perhaps even crazier, who told reporters that "we’ve 'spoiled' our workers by offering unemployment compensation to those laid off by no fault of their own.” And one can hardly talk about Buck and Angle and leave out Kentucky non-board-certified wacko Rand Paul, who -- just after whining to members of the media who wondered why more than half his income came from Medicare and Medicaid that "doctors deserve to make a comfortable living" -- got all philosophical on their asses:

As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that's less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again... Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.

To these members of the conservative elite, working families are brutes-- and if they're out of work it's their fault and, according to Orrin Hatch, probably drug addicts. Not victims of Wall Street gamblers who nearly drove the entire world bankrupt in their unfettered quest for more-- for which none were punished, of course-- but despicable drug addicts undeserving of aid through the hard times. God forbid you tell Ryan or any of his conservative brethren it's time to make the wealthy pay their fair share of the tax burden for the sake of society. It's more than they could comprehend or stand.

Of course, they're wrong. Unemployment insurance does not inhibit job searches except in the fevered dreams of the wealthy and their well-fed handmaidens... like Ryan. The DCCC, which also gets funding from the same Wall Street interests, is leaving Ryan alone. Again, they recruited no candidate-- in a blue-trending district that Obama won-- and they refuse to recognize the grassroots progressive, Paulette Garin, as a legitimate candidate. 

Either we, citizens of this country, stop Paul Ryan before its too late or we'll live to regret it. Iowa lunatic Steve King is a Ryan doppleganger when it comes to the economy. King was very pleased with himself the other day for saying, "We shouldn't turn the 'safety net' into a hammock. It should actually be a 'safety net'."

This morning Digby pointed to the very disturbing new hot thing: demonization of the poor. Looks like you can even color Paul Ryan Barbra. Plutocrats Rising-- in Aspen! From real estate baron Mort Zuckerman to British neo-fascist Niall Ferguson, all the rich and powerful are buying into Ryan's prescription for how to make the world beautiful again-- stop taxing the wealthy and do away with that durn safety net thing. After all, in the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression, who needs a safety net? Aren't the wealthy lucky they helped elect a transpartisan figure like Obama this time, willing EAGER to play the role of Herbert Hoover, instead of someone to shake things up like that commie Roosevelt! 

Digby, who didn't get invited, looked at their putrid soiree this morning:

Appropriately, the gossip columnist Lloyd Grove is covering the conclave and reported what they were all so excited about:

[Niall] Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.” Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”

Seriously, he's quoting Paul Ryan, the infantile, crackpot Randian, to a bunch of wealthy socialites, Hollywood liberals and self-interested tycoons.

Paul Ryan and Barbra Streisand, the new radical chic. At least after listening to all this everyone will be able to eat some yummy cake, far more yummy than the cruddy brioches Marie Antoinette was recommending to her disgruntled peasants.