I think what blows my mind is the scale of the incompetence on display in the Trump administration when it comes to dealing with COVID-19. Like, I can’t get my head around how utterly, completely incapable you have to be to screw up on the scale of Trump.
I am no one, and I know nothing, especially when it comes to dealing with worldwide pandemics. And yet, I’m 100% positive that if you plucked me off the street 6 months ago and told me there was a pandemic on its way and I had to deal with it, I could do a better job than Trump has.
Bare minimum, I would have known to hire a whole bunch of people smarter than me to deal with this crap, which would put me leaps and bounds ahead of Trump.
Notes below. Updates through the day.
🍊 Back in the beginning of March, Trump was forced to cancel his campaign rallies. He replaced those fairly quickly with his daily press briefings, a bonanza of bullshit broadcast live across the nation. Then he suggested that everyone inject disinfectants into themselves to fight COVID-19, which, NO, DO NOT, THAT IS BAD, and he got roasted so fucking hard over that he spent the weekend sulking and pouting. He canceled his press briefings, and got roasted for that too, so apparently they’re back on again. Jesus.
💣 The lockdowns are giving US extremists the time to get even more extreme and squirrelly. Nice.
🍊 Trump wants to use the pandemic as leverage to force the Post Office to make the changes he wants. FYI, Trump wants to make those changes specifically to screw over Amazon, because Trump’s mad that Jeff Bezos is actually the successful billionaire that Trump pretends to be. Of course, these changes will screw average Americans.
🦠 The COVID-19 pandemic started way earlier than we thought it did.
🚨 So Joe Biden is being accused of rape by a woman named Tara Reade, a situation I’ve been keeping an eye on. Initial reporting sounded a bit fishy, but since then a lot of bigger organizations have been reporting this story out, and folks, it looks pretty legit. And, I don’t know what to tell you about that. I just don’t. Obviously I’m not going to vote for Trump. I mean, for one thing, Trump’s probably raped way more women than Joe Biden has, and I guess that’s how we have to judge this shit now. Maybe Biden will do the decent thing and step down, and we can vote for Bernie instead. Otherwise, I guess in November I’ll be voting for the least rapey rapist. Awesome. I love politics.
🇺🇸 Nancy Pelosi is making noise about “guaranteed income” (AKA, universal basic income) in the next coronavirus relief bill. I don’t believe for a hot second we’ll see anything like that happen, but interesting that the idea’s gotten mainstream enough for someone like Pelosi to be talking about it. Points to Andrew Yang.
🍊 Trump tweeted today, “Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed, when most of the other states are not looking for bailout help? I am open to discussing anything, but just asking?” (In case he deletes, because he went on a tweet-delete binge this weekend: pic, Bloomberg article.)
💩 I could spend all day every day debunking the ridiculous conspiracy theories that have sprung up around COVID-19, which I am not going to do because all this terrible television isn’t going to watch itself. But I did see one today about how the flu vaccine makes COVID-19 worse, which, for the record, is bullshit.
🦠 We had a bunch of news this weekend about scary “new” symptoms (IE, symptoms they just decided were related) of COVID-19, including strokes in healthy 30- and 40-year-olds, sudden kidney failure, sudden heart failure, and a whole bunch of other terrible things, and I don’t know about you, but I’m just going to pretend I don’t know about any of that shit because I like being able to fall asleep at night.
🍊 Meanwhile, Trump refused to take any responsibility for people drinking bleach over the weekend, a thing that actually happened in the real world in 2020, and then, when he was asked if he deserved to be re-elected considering more than 50,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 so far, he said he did a great job, then ended his press rally and left.
Rough weekend for news, you guys. Ug. I’m gonna go walk my dog or something.
Notes & Thoughts 