When Trump was elected, I predicted, and many of our readers agreed, that Trump’s presidency would not end well and that his supporters would have to explain to their children and grandchildren why they enabled this charlatan to take the White House.  Well, his presidency is not quite over, but we’re there.  Trump’s gross negligence, erratic behavior, and malignant narcissism have take their toll and continue to do so.  COVID-19 just became the leading cause of death in the US, and has reached that point for one primary reason – Donald J. Trump.  His negligence has been well documented.  His idiotic declarations, then reversals of those declarations, have shown him to be the complete fool he is, and who is unimaginably ignorant, cruel, and unstable.  And his foolishness has been on full display through national television on a daily basis.

After declaring himself having “total” control over the states and ready to punish governors who don’t do what he orders, he reversed himself yesterday, issuing “guidelines” which were simply pablum for mass consumption, dumping ALL responsibility back on the governors including testing.  Testing has been just one of Trump’s massive failures, but is probably the most dangerous.  Lifting stay at home orders without massive testing is nothing short of negligent homicide.  Since Trump woke up from his Stupid Coma in mid-March he has promised massive testing.  Those promises are also lies, and he has missed every single date he has established for availability of testing.  Yesterday, The Atlantic published the results of their own studies that showed that the curve of infection in the US is shown to be “flattening” only because we’re not testing enough. In that article, one key quote was, “The high positivity rate also suggests that new cases in the U.S. have plateaued only because the country has hit a ceiling in its testing capacity.”  That means that cases show to be declining only because we don’t have enough testing.  Even as Trump has failed so miserably at leading the federal testing effort, he has incessantly lied about it.  Even yesterday, one of his many lies was this –

“We built the most advanced and robust testing anywhere in the world and we’ve done more testing than any country anywhere in the world.”

That statement is a lie.  A dangerous lie.  The US government is bungling the effort to get out testing, both infection and antibody, not because everyone at CDC and FDA have suddenly become incompetent, but because that is by design.  From the very beginning, Trump has tried “to keep my numbers down”.  To Trump, life and death issues are just a gameshow that he has to “win”.  That’s why he wanted to keep a cruise ship full of at risk Americans offshore so they wouldn’t add to his infection “score”.  The Atlantic said that our “test positivity” rate in the US is 20 percent.  That is a terrible rate, but it is that terrible because most states are only testing those who are symptomatic.  We know that asymptomatic Coronavirus carriers can infect many others.  Why then, are we not testing far more extensively to identify those people?  We are not testing because Trump believes that will make him look bad.

Yesterday, Trump reversed himself on “reopening the economy” because someone finally got through to him that his claim of total authority over the states guaranteed he will be blamed for the disaster that will ensue by lifting restrictions too early.  By minimizing testing, infections are grossly underreported justifying lifting restrictions when they should be left in place.

The only way we can begin to lift restrictions on stay at home and social distancing is through massive testing.  First, we need to test to get infected people isolated and treated.  Second, we need to identify those who were infected but have recovered and carry antibodies.  That can only be accomplished by massive antibody testing.  Besides critical care, massive testing is the number one goal we should be trying to achieve, but we’re not. Why? Because in Trump’s gameshow world, the most important thing is to report the lowest numbers and avoid responsibility so he can “win”.

And that, dear readers, is ACTUALLY getting people killed.

Today during Trump’s WH briefing campaign rally he threatened to use a never used presidential power to adjourn Congress.  He threatened this so he could ram through dozens of recess appointments with weirdos and incompetents.  Recall that Congress started never recessing as a tool to keep Barack Obama from doing recess appointments.  Also recall that Obama went to the Supreme Court to get a ruling on that practice…he lost.  Anyone want to bet that the Roberts Court will rule the same against Trump?  I wouldn’t hold my breath since we now live in Trumpland.

American rule of law is dead.

Trump is on national television now, blaming the WHO for his incompetence and has ordered the US government to cut off funding to it.  That’s right, folks, Trump, who sat on his fat ass from December to the middle of March playing golf and holding rallies, is now desperately trying to rewrite history to shift blame for his gross negligence onto the media, China, and the WHO.

God save us.  We’ve got nothing left.

OK, folks, it is seriously way past time to STOP airing Trump’s “briefings” on the Coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe.  During today’s briefing episode of The Apprentice, WH Edition, Trump actually aired a video that is nothing more than a North Korean style Dear Leader propaganda video that took snippets of actual news reports way out of context to make him look good.  Real networks immediately cut from their coverage, accurately reporting what Trump was doing.  The worst part was him standing to the side of the stage gloating and mugging for the cameras as the bullshit spewed from the WH video system.  We are WAY past time for the 25th Amendment.

Trump’s approval ratings, which always hover around the low 40s, has risen in the last month as many Americans rallied around him as he thrashed around trying to make the Coronavirus pandemic go away.  He started daily briefings for the first time in over a year and his approval went up.  Now an interesting effect of his daily exposure is occurring – people (who don’t pay much attention) are figuring out that Trump actually is doing a terrible job with the crisis.  I believe they’re figuring that out because every day, Trump:

• Lies, lies, lies.  His incessant lying results in his staff having to continuously crisis manage, backtracking on his bombastic claims of everything from cures to numbers, to non-existent vaccines and tests.
• Is permanently radically partisan.  He attacks everyone who criticizes him and airs old grievances daily.
• Cuts off the experts to spout conspiracy theories and bullshit.
• Insults the international community, WHO, NATO, and many others including his usual targets, China and “shithole” countries.
• Insults the press, refuses to answer a straight question repeats “fake news” every minute.
• Holds his “briefings” at the 5 pm newshour so his ratings are higher.  He sometimes blathers for up to 2 hours, providing very little actual new information. It wrecks news programing throughout the country.

This worked for a few weeks, but Trump is wearing pretty thin with millions of Americans.  His ratings are falling in new polls, and Biden is rising against him in key states like Florida.  I can’t watch it, but Trump is inadvertently damaging his re-election prospects by putting his incompetence and cornered badger personality every day on national television.  Even most loyal Trumpists have backed away from their idiotic boasting and taunting of normal Americans who are watching this debacle slack-jawed in disbelief.

Trump’s “winning” has now erased ALL of the stock market gains since he took office.  Unemployment this morning is 13% the highest in almost 100 years.  We are struggling with a global pandemic without the benefit of a strong pandemic response team because it was dismantled.  We are struggling with confusing and often conflicting information.  Our infection rate is understated because there is virtually no testing available.  Those who had it and have recovered have no way of confirming their illness because no serum antibody test is available.  The CDC is paralyzed by politicized appointments and slashed budgets.

Trump couldn’t do a better job of destroying the US economy if he tried.  The silver lining here, though, is that he’s putting his corruption, incompetence, and hatefulness of full display for hours every day.  Doing that is actually starting to get through to Americans who normally don’t pay attention.

Over the last hour, Trump has been bragging on Twitter about the “ratings” his WH briefings are getting.  Let’s be clear here…2/3 of Americans are confined to their homes.  There were 3 million new unemployment claims this week.  There are over 100,000 confirmed cases (most of any country in the world), God knows how many actually infected since we don’t have testing available.  Millions of Americans are terrified.  And what is Trump doing this morning?

BRAGGING ABOUT HIS FUCKING “RATINGS”.  This is all just reality television for him to stroke his own festering ego.

The level of loathing I have for this cretin cannot be described in English.