Trump Makes Political Rally Speech While Thousands Die from Covid19

Write your own headline. I’m waiting for BiFF to send me one.

It’s difficult to characterize that “speech” without sounding repetitive as to the dubious content, delivery, etc. But here’s the thing that bothers me most:

Honest question for Trump supporters…

Ah, screw it.

You people think this rambling verbal dysentery is the love child of Churchill and Demosthenes.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 14, 2020

I know what you’re thinking.

Marco…?

From the man who always sounds like he’s struggling to find himself:

Over the last 24 hours I have received reports from several #Florida hospitals concerned about their potentially critical shortage of Remdesivir.

I am in contact with federal officials in hopes of addressing this matter immediately.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 13, 2020

From a distance, It looks like Marco is panicking as he watches his political career melting away.

Time and time again, Marco is faced with an unimaginably horrific human tragedy, acknowledges that horror, tweets a few quotes from a Bronze Age self help book, makes a “someone should do something!” statement, and then backs out of the room like some pathetic party whipkisser.

These days, you can either be a Republican or a person who is committed to humanity. You can’t be both. Stop trying, Marco. Make a choice.

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BTW, it’s not like you can just flip a switch to make more Remdesivir. Gilead would have to contract to have another FDA approved facility to make it. That takes months. There is a place that might be able to get old manufacturing facilities up and running, though there will need to be retrofitting and the FDA is still going to want to do its regulatory thing. That’s Puerto Rico.

What are the chances that that will happen without a major Trumpian hissy fit?

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One last thing: Anthony Fauci is highly respected in his field because of his experience with AIDS in the 80’s. That’s not nothing. That was a new thing that no one had ever seen before. We didn’t even know that retroviruses existed until then. He watched many many gay patients dying and started to figure out how they were getting sick from their summer holidays on Fire Island.

He is not a god. He’s a human being. He is a very smart, intuitive, experienced doctor. He also has two things that make him invaluable at a time like this: 1.) he’s not arrogant about his remarkable accomplishments and 2.) unlike some famous scientists I’ve had to sit through seminars listening to, he’s an excellent communicator.

The only thing I have had trouble with as far as his advice goes was the issue of masks. I think he knew from the beginning that we should all be wearing them. South Korea started slapping them on almost immediately and flattened their curve in record time. Fauci knew the value of masks. I’m willing to cut him a small break here in that we had a critical shortage of them and front line healthcare workers needed them and were a first priority. He might have reasoned that if we stayed home during the lockdown, fewer people would need them. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes? Trump is notoriously anti-mask and has been from the beginning. Maybe there was a gag order from the beginning. Maybe Fauci didn’t see how the youtube, etsy and home sewer communities would start printing patterns and do the work themselves. It didn’t take long.

But putting that aside, it’s clear to me that he’s been muzzled from the beginning. He chose every word carefully. Then sometime in the past 6 weeks or so, he must have either told Trump to go f}#^ himself or told him he would just start being completely honest. That couldn’t stand in Trump’s world so he had to go. Fauci took off his muzzle. Now he must be destroyed.

There will be people in Trump’s base that will reflexively pile on.

Shame on them.