Trump is stealing medical equipment to buy votes

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Words fail me.

Pure evil.

[T]he White House seizes goods from public officials and hospitals across the country while doling them out as favors to political allies and favorites, often to great fanfare to boost the popularity of those allies. The Denver Post today editorialized about one of the most egregious examples. Last week, as we reported, a shipment of 500 ventilators to the state of Colorado was intercepted and rerouted by the federal government. Gov. Jared Polis (D) sent a letter pleading for the return of the equipment. Then yesterday President Trump went on Twitter to announce that he was awarding 100 ventilators to Colorado at the behest of Republican Senator Cory Gardner, one of the most endangered Republicans on the ballot this year. As the Post put it, “President Donald Trump is treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It’s the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives.”

He steals life-saving ventilators from a state and then gives them to a political ally and brags about it on Twitter.

The words don’t exist.

I wish I could poison his ice cream and then watch him thrash around in agony.

New examples of confiscations or rerouted orders crop up almost every day. Here’s one about a shipment of test kit materials bound for the PeaceHealth hospital system in the Pacific Northwest seized and shipped, purportedly, to the East Coast. The supplies would allow hospitals like Bellingham, Washington’s St Joseph’s Hospital to do tests on premises and more quickly ascertain who is COVID-positive and who’s not. “Our analyzers remain idle, while we continue to send specimens to outside laboratory testing sites, prioritizing labs based on the shortest turnaround times,” a spokesman for the hospital system told The Bellingham Herald.

For all the confusion, what is clear is that the federal government is demanding that states, localities and hospital systems find their own supplies while systematically interdicting those they do purchase and rerouting them in other directions while providing no explanation of what standards are being used to distribute them. At the same time, Republican officeholders keep turning up announcing windfalls of medical supplies courtesy of the President. In many cases, like Gardner, they’re Republicans within blue or purple states.

Words entirely fail me.

Comments

8 responses to “Trump is stealing medical equipment to buy votes”

  1. maddog1129 Avatar
    maddog1129

    Donald Trump is a serial murderer.

  2. maddog1129 Avatar
    maddog1129

    ETA: American Caligula

  3. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    This is a message to all Republican Senators not named Mitt Romney: You allowed this to happen. You willed this to happen. You knew…you saw the evidence…Donald Trump was corrupt, felonious, and incompetent. He willfully flouted the Constitution to enrich himself and enhance his own profile. You knew that. You saw the evidence.

    I hold every Republican Senator not named Mitt Romney personally responsible. They are as responsible as the Donald, because this was not a hidden corruption. He has been corrupt and evil in full sight of all of you. Please do the country…and the world…a favor, and resign immediately. Apologize immediately. And pay reparations to those who had loved ones die as a result of the incompetence…no, the evil malevolence…of this man and your party.

  4. Blood Knight in Sour Armor Avatar
    Blood Knight in Sour Armor

    Seems like a strategically stupid idea as well… The chance of this backfiring is significant.

    Sacrificing people’s lives is a callous thing; doing it for what amounts to no reason at all? Incalculable.

  5. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    George III’s government in England ran on just such a system of patronage. It helped bring on the Revolution of 1776.

  6. Papito Avatar
    Papito

    Yeah, mad King Donald stole N95 masks from Massachusetts too.

    In the span of several days, Marylou Sudders and a team of state officials confirmed two separate orders last week: one for hundreds of N95 respirator masks and another promising shipments of 35 ventilators to Massachusetts, every week, for the “foreseeable future,” the state’s health and human services secretary said.

    They represented victories, if relatively small ones compared to the millions of pieces of equipment the state is chasing. That is, until, it ran into a force seemingly as immovable as the novel coronavirus.

    “Force majeure,” Sudders said Friday, citing the legal clause that translates to “superior force” and typically allows parties to opt out of a contract due to unforeseen circumstances. In this case, that was the federal government exercising its authority over the state amid the pandemic, she said.

    The state did a run-around and brought equipment back from China on the Patriots plane.

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/02/nation/kraft-family-used-patriots-team-plane-shuttle-protective-masks-china-boston-wsj-reports/

    People in Boston were watching the plane come in on flight tracker sites, and hoping it didn’t get shot down or something. I wonder if this crazy situation will lead to actual shooting sometimes.

  7. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Jeezus. There aren’t enough swears in the WORLD for this.

  8. Papito Avatar
    Papito

    Surprising consequences?

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-09/california-declares-independence-from-trump-s-coronavirus-plans

    Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

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