Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Second rate reporter says what?

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I really should read my own blog.

Everybody saw this coming.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Come on, man.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The revolution will be supervised.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / Repub Venality Open Thread: Trump Wishcasts Himself As A ‘War Prezdint’

Repub Venality Open Thread: Trump Wishcasts Himself As A ‘War Prezdint’

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Trump Wishcasts Himself A 'War Prezdint' - STOCKPILE

(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)
.

He’s a war president, for sure, if you assume his war is against at least 63% of the American public.


Reader Interactions

96Comments

  1. 1.

    Roger Moore

    People who are dying of this virus are not dying to protect the American way of life. They’re dying because their government has had a completely ineffective response to this infectious disease.

    But what if ineffective government is part of the American way of life?

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    Quotes and passages from the sane side, in the (very good) LA Times story in Anne’s roundup of tweets, above.

    Trump calls Americans ‘warriors’ in fight to open the economy

    We were discussing this the other day, and got sidetracked by the reporter’s mention of the “Resolute” desk.  Maybe Trump will rename it the “Warrior” desk.  And, FWIW, I think Trump called Michael Flynn a “warrior” a few times yesterday.

    The new language shows Trump appears to view people as “collateral damage to salvage the economy,” said Jeffrey Levi, a public health expert at George Washington University.

    “Good generals do not send their soldiers into battle without knowing that there will be a net gain,” Levi said. “And here we know reopening too soon will be a net loss, both in lives and the long-term stability of the economy.”

    ….

    Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said there’s no valor in sacrificing people’s lives to fight the pandemic.

    “People who are dying of this virus are not dying to protect the American way of life,” he said. “They’re dying because their government has had a completely ineffective response to this infectious disease.”

    If Americans are being considered warriors, Jha said, Trump is sending them onto the battlefield without the testing and contact tracing required for protection.

    “He has left Americans disarmed,” he said. “He’s not given the American people the tools they need to fight this virus.”

    Trump used the “warrior” lingo throughout his trip to Arizona on Tuesday, when he visited a factory producing protective masks for healthcare workers.  [And somebody put “Live and Let Die” on the soundsystem playlist, as we recall.]

  6. 6.

    Hunter Gathers

    Give me the ability to hassle the wait staff at Hooters or give me death!

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @TaMara (HFG): I dunno, but Mike Pence is on his way to Iowa. I wonder if he’ll make a mask-less visit to a meat-packing plant, to show how safe it is?

    Jennifer Jacobs @JenniferJJacobs ·1h
    Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst and US Ag Sec Sonny Perdue on AF2 from DC to Iowa today.

    Jennifer Jacobs @JenniferJJacob
    NEWS: Pence flight to Iowa delayed an hour after a staffer tested positive for coronavirus, I’m told. Some aides disembarked AF2. Wheels up now for Iowa.

    8:48 AM · May 8, 2020·

  9. 9.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Roger Moore:

    People who are dying of this virus are not dying to protect the American way of life. They’re dying because their government has had a completely ineffective response to this infectious disease.

    Were it not for the completely ineffective, imbecilic national response to both the medical and economic factors of this, there wouldn’t be such pressure to reopen.

    An effective medical response would be a use of the DPA to compel production of masks, and not the haphazard distribution disruptions that have occurred.  It would bypass IP profiteering on mask design and pharma, and do a Manhattan Project on treatment and vaccine, also bypassing the profiteering and gouging features of our economic model.

    An effective economic response would be a moratorium on all rents and mortgages, congressionally mandated haircuts to bond and swaps holders via the bankruptcy power, a halt to equity trades and Fed backstops to make some gesture to investors harmed.

    It would have been cheaper, and we could’ve stayed locked down for about 120 days.

    You think Europe or SE Asia will want American travelers for a while?

  11. 11.

    germy

    States beginning to loosen restrictions while deaths remain about 2,000 a day — and any vaccine is likely at least a year away.

    Trying to prevent more deaths would be unfair to those who have already died from this virus.

  12. 12.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    I really want some senior GOP senator or senior admin official to get it and die a choking death, drowning in their own lung fluid.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    MSNBC is reporting that a member of VP Pence’s staff has tested + for COVID-19. They haven’t identified the staffer’s role, closeness to VP, or other details.

    Trump must be freaking completely the fuck out.

  14. 14.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    And eventually, it WILL begin to impact Americans in the suburbs and exurbs,

    It’s there already, just a significant portion of the population as been trained all their lives to ignore reality. This is the deadly fruit of the Creationism.  That “I reject reality and substitute my own” that Jamie from Myth Busters talks about.

  16. 16.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    Trying to prevent more deaths would be unfair to those who have already died from this virus.

    Ah yes, the old student loan and 2008 mortgage adjustment arguments.

    Its always nice to see the classics return to the political pitch.

  19. 19.

    SFAW

    “Let’s avoid the partisan blame game”

    — usually uttered by someone from the group that actually SHOULD be blamed for causing the problem in the first place.

  21. 21.

    Barbara

    I still have a sense of wonderment that Trump has been completely incapable of taking advantage of the situation.  Think of GWB, sucking wind by September of 2001, with his approvals at an all-time low and then 9/11 happens, and boing, with just the ability to play the part of the protector in chief he goes up to 90% approval with a lingering tail long enough to get him reelected, even though he completely fucked us up by invading Iraq (and fucked up Iraq by many multiples of the domestic impact).

  22. 22.

    hueyplong

    Yesterday alone we saw Trump’s freak-out over an aide’s positive test and the immediate change of WH testing from weekly to daily while simultaneously telling untested Americans to be warriors.

    In a rational narrative that would be a Stillson moment effectively ending his presidency.

    Instead we move on to Friday, wondering what’s next.

    (And this doesn’t even take into account the godawful Flynn power grab on the same day.)

  23. 23.

    artem1s

    well scaring the rubes by declaring a war worked for Bush II, not so much for Bush I.  I’m kind of betting that the folks this typically work on expect those other people to be the cannon fodder in these dog wagging shows.  For once the regular troops may actually be safer than the war mongering armchair commandos.

  24. 24.

    Searcher

    The efforts of humans can roughly be divided into two categories: war and agriculture.

    War is all the things that are done and won.  You fight a war, you win it, it’s over.  You design a building, you build it, it is done.  A lot of work is like this; you are presented with an objective, you accomplish it, and you move on to the next.

    Then you have agriculture.  Do you know what happens after you reap what you sow?  You get ready to sow again.  It is a recurring process of doing the same thing over and over, day after day, year after year.  You don’t finish farming, you don’t finish teaching, you don’t finish maintaining and preserving and archiving.  You just keep doing it.

    Besides everything else that is wrong with it, the wartime mentality that infects public thought is dangerous in that it looks for endings, to finish things once and for all that are never finished, because that is not the point.

    We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

  26. 26.

    Miss Bianca

    @Barbara: IKR? One of the tweets that one of the front-pagers (probably AL) embedded recently marvelled at the fact that Trump simply couldn’t grok the notion that an effective COVID-19 response would have *boosted* his re-election chances.

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    So. Pence delivered empty boxes to a hospital. Pretended for the cameras (of course there’s cameras) that they were full of PPE for the workers. He struggled to lift the empty box. He set it down in such fashion that it prevented the functional operation of the sliding door, the door that keeps literal hot air out of the building.

    If I was a screenwriter in the future trying to come up with metaphors for the utter mendacious ineptitude of these people, I could not do better than this.

    Struggling to lift an empty fucken box.

  31. 31.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, a different person. I doubt he’ll be the last, either, and I’m guessing that within a couple of weeks someone from the inner circle — family member, Cabinet officer, very senior staffer (IOW, someone whose name we know) — will show symptoms/test positive.

  32. 32.

    japa21

     

     

    @Searcher:

    We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

    I love that phrase. I will try to give you credit when I use it. Emphasis on the word try.

  33. 33.

    Barbara

    @artem1s: The use of war to galvanize your fellow citizens is much more effective when their own welfare is not threatened.   Seeing people whine about not being able to get their nails done is kind of stunning.  I do get it.  It’s not really my nails that are suffering, it’s my manicurist (well, if I had one).  So I actually do have some sympathy for the salon operators and their employees.  But their anger should be directed at the authorities who will not come up with a plan to figure out how to slowly reopen as they ramp up testing, especially for vulnerable people.  This is just an abject failure of leadership.

  36. 36.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    It’s a version of the spirit of covetousness I’ve always heard from goshdarned hardworking southern and midwestern white conservatives who get angry over any benefit that doesn’t go to some white man born to wealth and privilege.

  38. 38.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @hueyplong:

    Run it as Pay per Click, and you could pay off the national COVID expenses in three months.

    Have the Pornhub engineers design the architecture of the servers and site.

  39. 39.

    Barbara

    @hueyplong: They have definitely been having a lot more of these staged offsite events.  There is a lot of planning that takes place, and the aides and personnel who have to arrange these things are basically unprotected as they fly to wherever in advance of the President and VP, who just basically get on a plan and go there and don’t really come into close contact with anyone.  They stay in hotels, they usually fly on non-government airplanes, they meet with police or with the institutional security and scope out the conference rooms and other locations where the president will be, etc.

    All I can say is that as more and more of them get sick, I would not be surprised if Trump ends up canceling whatever rallies he has been planning in his head.

  41. 41.

    artem1s

    @hueyplong:

    In a rational narrative that would be a Stillson moment effectively ending his presidency.

    We may actually be approaching the Hitler bunker meltdown point.  I’ve been expecting someone inside to release a secret recordings any day now.  With all the unsecured phones in the West Wing, someone’s got to be betting on a “tell all” book deal – provided they live thru this mess.

    At this point the Stillson moment may have to wait for 2021 when the secret service have to drag his sorry ass out of the WH.

  44. 44.

    JaneE

    “People who are dying of this virus are not dying to protect the American way of life. They’re dying because their government has had a completely ineffective response to this infectious disease.”

    With all due respect to Harvard, people are dying because their government chose to let them die.

  45. 45.

    Wolf

    Michael Bayer@mbayer1248

    Here is my fear: numbers are abstract, and most Americans have not personally experienced death due to the coronavirus. The pandemic is disproportionately devastating elderly in nursing homes, hourly workers in a handful of urban areas, immigrants in meat-packing plants..

    ———————

    That’s why we need to move from abstract numbers 70k deaths to emotional images, e.g., more deaths now than in Vietnam.   Use Vietnam or 9/11 units.  It hits the gut.

  46. 46.

    Miss Bianca

    @Barbara: Meanwhile, I just found out that the proprietress of one of my salons (OK, every 3-4 months I’d go get my eyebrows waxed, don’t judge!) died recently. Directly COVID-19 related? Probably not – the last time I was in there, which was right before the big shutdown, we talked about the death of her son and his father, both in the same car crash. It was awful, and I couldn’t believe she was able to talk about it at all.

    Now I hear rumors that her death might have been suicide. Maybe not related at all to the fact that she had to shut down and couldn’t make a living, maybe just related to grief. But still…it gave me a pang to drive by her salon the other day and see that big banner she had outside – “WE LOVE YOU, STAY SAFE, WE’LL SEE YOU SOON” – was gone. : (

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Suzanne: Even better, he was caught on a hot mic saying that he wanted to carry a couple of empty boxes “for the cameras.”

    What. A. Maroon.

  48. 48.

    Gvg

    We aren’t warriors fighting the virus, we are warriors fighting our own government. We are going to have to risk our lives to go to the polls. In the meantime it sort of resembles hamburger hill with a lunatic in charge.

    i wonder if real soldiers are as insulted as I am. He has no clue what the really have to do, they are just slogans whose popularly he wants to steal.

  49. 49.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @James E Powell:

    Just one? I’d like it to be every R in the senate.

    Picture McConnell whimpering and gasping in a bed in the crowded hallway of Bethesda, as he sees an intubated Grassley being wheeled down a hallway.  A few doors down, in Graham’s room, the tones of all the devices and shouts are coming as he is coding out.

    Shit, this stuff is better than V!agra…

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

    @Barbara:

     

    I will never forget the protester who said that he was mad about not being able to get free refills on his drinks at a restaurant.

    Someone should risk his life so that he can get an extra Sprite.

  52. 52.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Miss Bianca:

    I can’t be too angry at anxious shop owners – our government has absolutely failed us and has led to the pressure to reopen, as none of our creditors or landlords are going away.

  53. 53.

    Aleta

    Yes send the warrior children in to reveal the enemy’s hiding places.  Search and destroy!  Sacrifice the dirt-eating grunts to call down hospitals’ firepower.   Attrition will win this war, you better believe it!  Go  Warriors!  Gung and tally ho!

  54. 54.

    catclub

    also, all the people ( sorry, warriors)  who die from it don’t even help establish herd immunity

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    Today is the 75th anniversary of VE Day. You know, when real warriors fought to defeat an enemy. And no one suggested that the people back home had to sacrifice themselves to save the economy.

  57. 57.

    Zinsky

    The only reason our reptilian acting president is so damn worried about America “getting back to work” is that his crummy hotels and shitty golf courses are just about to go teats up!   He literally is on the brink of becoming the first sitting president to declare personal bankruptcy.  I’m sure Deutsche Bank is calling the White House every day, wondering how this POS is going to pay them back.  Vote but even more important – don’t go back to work until you absolutely have to!  You will help bankrupt Trump!

  61. 61.

    Archon

    If someone were to ask me last year which country would have the absolute worse outcomes in every measure if a global pandemic would have hit, I would have said without hesitation the United States.

    The “this is just a flu” hoaxers, the mask truthers, the epically botched response and botched reopening by Trump and right-wing governors. The number of dead that dwarfs every other country. None of this would have surprised 2019 Archon with a glimpse into the future.

  62. 62.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Archon:

    I would have predicted that the moment that the bloated buffoon got sworn in.

  63. 63.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Archon: I think my favorite ridiculous statement are the people who claim that it’s a ‘seasonal flu’ and therefore no vaccine will ever be available and yet THEY’RE the victims here because people keep calling this lies and misinformation. Go freedom!

    It’s not a seasonal flu, but there is literally a flu vaccine every fucking year. You get to watch them make two incredibly wrong points that nevertheless disprove each other in just one sentence.

  64. 64.

    MisterForkbeard

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yep. Screwing up the actual response so badly that you cause real harm and then fucking up the scripted propaganda event too is exactly on brand for this clusterfuck of an administration.

  65. 65.

    Citizen Alan

    @artem1s: Actually, war worked too well for Bush I. His mistake was in being too effective as a wartime President and thus declaring victory early enough for his approval rating to come back down in response to his economic fumbling. It was a lesson Bush II learned well, which is why we’re still in Afghanistan 20 years later.

  66. 66.

    Mike in NC

    In his latest column, Dana Millbank speculates that if Trump had been responsible for the Manhattan Project, we’d all be speaking Japanese today.

  71. 71.

    sdhays

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wow. This has literally been my wish for a while now. The only difference is that I don’t care if he’s trapped in his body. I just want him to not be able to use his vomit hole to speak, and to be unable to write/tweet. I think having him just be able to watch while he’s shoved aside and ignored (and blamed) would have to be a particularly personal hell for him.

  74. 74.

    lumpkin

    Trump is like a puppy with a chew toy and this “warrior” shit is just the latest. Somebody got him all jazzed up about it and now he thinks he sounds inspiring and courageous. He’ll flog this thing to death like he does everything else and won’t inspire anyone. The only people who are inspired by him are his psychotic supporters and its the hate and racism they love, not any call to national sacrifice.

  75. 75.

    L85NJGT

    The correct post peak analogy would be winning the peace. Full throttle on test, trace and quarantine, finding an effective course of treatment, and a vaccine.

  77. 77.

    Brother Maynard

    Since we are now a warriors in the CV-19 fight, do we get to use the VA after it’s over?  Can we use the GI Bill for schooling and to get VA housing loans?

  78. 78.

    L85NJGT

    @Baud:

    This is Trump were talking about – it will be some garish multi-colored sash, with a big pot metal trinket.

  82. 82.

    bemused

    @Ruckus:

    Trump is whipping his staff, spraying spittle everywhere, for not being  good enough warriors to stop covid-19 from entering his space.

  84. 84.

    Fair Economist

    @Suzanne:

    So. Pence delivered empty boxes to a hospital. Pretended for the cameras (of course there’s cameras) that they were full of PPE for the workers. He struggled to lift the empty box. He set it down in such fashion that it prevented the functional operation of the sliding door, the door that keeps literal hot air out of the building.

    Obviously defective door. If it really kept hot air out it wouldn’t have let Pence in.

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    Turning the floor over for a moment to Aldous Huxley:

    “One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.”

    “A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.”

    And a bonus smidgen of Kierkegaard:

    “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

  86. 86.

    VOR

    @SiubhanDuinne: Slightly more nuanced in reality. Pence did a photo-op where he delivered PPE to a facility. I say “delivered”, he rolled a cart from a van 50 feet to a sliding door, picked up two boxes, and placed them on the ground blocking the sliding door. He then took the cart back to the van. Someone said the remaining boxes in the van were empty and he said, that’s okay it’s just for the photo-op.

    The MAGAts are going to claim you libs got it all wrong, he didn’t deliver empty boxes, he delivered full boxes. All liars, fake news.

    But Pence was totally okay with bringing empty boxes as long as it was caught on camera. Shades of Paul Ryan washing clean dishes. Oh, and Pence was not wearing a mask.

  88. 88.

    dnfree

    Apparently the Pence empty box thing is fake. He was joking. I wish people wouldn’t do that.

  89. 89.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @Zinsky: Not to mention the Bank of China, and various “friends of Vladimir Vladimirovich” are quite interested in his financial well-being.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @Zinsky: IIRC, Donnie has his businesses set up to kinda-sorta work as family enterprises, but he also had a zillion “companies” set up (that he did divest from) for his real-estate holdings.  Like every apartment unit was a separate “company”, kinda thing.  I doubt very much that he would have to declare personal bankruptcy given all the machinations he’s done.  Others will be holding the bag – as always.

    We’ll see.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Hair Furor’s sole tactic in fighting his war on the virus is much like the Allied commanders did early in WWI where they just kept throwing soldiers at German machine guns and letting them get mowed down.

    We’re warriors now? Fuck that static, I didn’t enlist and I’m not being drafted. I want to live. When a Republican starts talking about patriotism and warriors, people usually start dying.

  94. 94.

    Chris Johnson

    Being mad at the empty boxes is like being mad that the WMDs weren’t REALLY under the couch in Bush’s jokey video.

    Unclear on the concept, and not spotting the part that’s legitimately bad.

  95. 95.

    J R in WV

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Trump must be freaking completely the fuck out.

    Perhaps, but he well may not be able to accept that he too is vulnerable to diseases.

    Has he ever had a serious illness, where you lay in bed wondering if this is what it feels like to be dying? Or so serious that you are kinda hoping you won’t wake up in the morning still being sick and wondering how sick you really are? If he did, once, does he remember it or has he cancelled that memory because it is not acceptable to his neurosis?

  96. 96.

    J R in WV

    @Miss Bianca:

    …Trump simply couldn’t grok the notion that an effective COVID-19 response would have *boosted* his re-election chances.

    While this is true, if perhaps he knew that an effective plague response would ensure his re-election, would he, could he have possibly mustered an effective federal response?

    No.

    He can’t even pick competent people (like the CDC staff and other federal researchers) and let them do what they do. He has to poke and prod and make speeches and hire and fire — that’s what he always does. He can’t help it, it’s why he keeps going bankrupt.

    This is how that works in public policy.

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