If Trump can corrupt and silence even the technical experts what hope is there?
Not much.
On Saturday night, President Donald Trump made the dangerously inaccurate claim that 99% of coronavirus cases are “totally harmless.” On Sunday morning, one of his top health experts failed to correct the assertion, a stunning breakdown of the government’s core duty to keep Americans safe and protect the public health.
CNN’s Dana Bash pressed US Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn repeatedly Sunday morning to explain the President’s false statement in his Fourth of July speech from the South Lawn of the White House, one that minimized the devastating effects of the virus and seemed to encourage Americans to ignore the deadly risks of a pandemic that has so far claimed more than 129,000 American lives.
And that “so far,” remember, is in just the last four months, and it’s picking up speed at a terrible rate.
“I’m not going to get into who is right and who is wrong,” Hahn, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told Bash during CNN’s “State of the Union” when she asked him to explain the basis for the President’s claim and why he would be pushing the narrative that most Covid-19 cases are harmless when his public health experts are saying the opposite.
What a ridiculous thing to say. This isn’t a frazzled parent mediating between two children who are arguing about who is the best spitter, this is a rapidly escalating pandemic. Getting into who is right and who is wrong is of vital importance.
Bash asked him a fourth time to correct what Bozo said, but he simply said “this is serious.” Yeah thanks, that’s a big help.
Hahn’s refusal to specifically address Trump’s misleading claim underscored the growing trust gap between Americans and this administration. Hahn apparently was afraid to correct the President — a pattern that has repeated itself over and over again in an administration where disagreeing with or undercutting Trump has cost many appointees their jobs.
In other words we’re screwed.
Comments
4 responses to “Not going to get into what’s true and what isn’t”
Putin et al must be just wetting themselves with glee and disbelief over all this.
From the CNN report:
From the CNN report again:
That whole CNN report is worth reading. ‘Seems to’ leaves backtracking space which could come in handy later. But it is way too soft for right now. Both CNN and Hahn clearly do not want to upset the toddler-king in the White House who is prone to throwing temper-tantrums if he does not get his way. Hahn seems to want (read ‘clearly wants’ ) to keep the job bestowed upon him by His Little Majesty, when a far better political course IMHO would be a forthright statement of the truth as he and the rest of the scientific community see it.
Better history record him as sacked by Trump for telling the truth (ie because of Trump’s attitude, thousands of Americans are going to needlessly die) than for being a cautious toady.
Through the truth, he will be fondly remembered. ‘Make them sack you, then carry on the fight from that moral base’ is IMHO a pretty good rule in politics.
I was listening to an epidemiologist on a podcast the other day who said something like ‘in all the models and forecasts we developed the one thing we did not predict was the total lack of response from the federal government.’
guest,
Sounds like Asimov’s Mule.