Don't Panic! Except When I Tell You To...
We have a new contender for the biggest Trump lie yet. This is mostly due to its all-encompassing nature. Trump is lying not only about the issue of the day, but about his entire political career as a whole, as well.
The revelation from Bob Woodward's book that started all of this was that President Donald Trump knew how dangerous the COVID-19 pandemic would be and then flat-out lied to the American public, downplaying the issue all he could. Woodward has tapes of Trump, making the accusation impossible to deny.
This has left Trump and his defenders flat-footed, flailing around for a way to make the issue go away or even attempt to explain it in any way. Yesterday, Trump attempted to do so with an enormous whopper:
If you said "in order to reduce panic," perhaps that's so. I'm a cheerleader for this country. I don't want people to be frightened. I don't want to create panic.
Later, on Sean Hannity's show, Trump tried this line of reasoning again:
I'm the leader of the country, I can't be jumping up and down and scaring people. I don't want to scare people. I want people not to panic, and that's exactly what I did.
Got that? As the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy put it: "Don't panic!"
Donald Trump is trying to convince us all that he is the cheerleader-in-chief that refuses to share negative news with the public because it just might panic them. He sincerely doesn't want anyone to panic, because that would (obviously) be a bad thing. He doesn't want people to be frightened in any way. He will calm the country down in a tough time, and by doing so bring us all together. Or something along those lines.
[I will now pause, to allow readers to roll around on the floor laughing for as long as they require.]
This entire scenario might have the tiniest shred of believability -- if it weren't for pretty much everything else Trump has ever said or done. Let's review the things Trump has not only told the American people to panic over, but be very very afraid of:
- Mexican immigrants ("rapists!")
- Jeb Bush
- John McCain
- Ted Cruz's father
- Ted Cruz's wife
- Marco Rubio
- Lindsey Graham
- The media
- The "deep state" that is out to get Trump
- The F.B.I.
- The Justice Department
- NATO
- Voice of America
- The Paris Accords
- The Iran nuclear deal
- NAFTA
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal
- all Democrats ("the Democrat Party")
- Hillary Clinton
- Hillary Clinton's email server
- Barack Hussein Obama, naturally
- Obamacare
- Any judge that issues any ruling against him
- At times, the Supreme Court, too
- Nancy Pelosi
- San Francisco
- People in "shithole countries"
- Any immigrant who does not come from a place like Norway
- Caravans of immigrants from Central America (a national emergency that required military intervention, no less)
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the rest of the Squad (who should "go back to where they came from")
- Bernie Sanders
- Elizabeth Warren ("Pocahontas")
- Joe Biden
- Hunter Biden
- Kamala Harris
- Cory Booker (who will be put in charge of moving dark-skinned people in next door to you in the suburbs, once Biden is elected)
- Mitt Romney
- Black Lives Matter
- Antifa
- Marxists
- Socialists
- Planned Parenthood
- Rioters, looters, arsonists, and agitators in the streets of every city in America, and who are probably coming to your town next!
- People who tear down statues of people who committed treason against the country
- Transgender people
- All European leaders, with the possible exception of Britain
- Fox News pollsters
- All the other pollsters, too (except maybe Rasmussen)
- Adam Schiff ("Shifty Schiff!") and everyone else involved in impeaching Trump
- China
- The C.D.C.
- The F.D.A.
- Andrew Cuomo
- Bill de Blasio
- Gavin Newsom
- Gretchen Whitmer ("that woman in Michigan")
- all other Democratic ("Democrat") governors
- all Democratic mayors, too
- Dr. Anthony Fauci
You will please note, this is not even a complete list. I wrote this list off the top of my head, and I'm sure I've forgotten all kinds of things Trump has told us all to panic over during the last four years. They come so fast and furious it's tough to remember them all (oh, yeah: "the F.B.I.'s 'Fast And Furious' program"... can't forget that one).
Trump's entire political persona is built around panic, it's pretty plain to see. He uses panic as a tool, to convince his followers that he and he alone can save them from all sorts of bugaboos and evil forces. He whips his crowds into a frenzy of panic, every time he gives a rally. It is who he is, period.
Which is why I paused, earlier, so you could laugh all you wanted at Trump's insistence that "I don't want people to be frightened. I don't want to create panic."
His entire campaign for re-election is built on panic and fear. Look at any of his statements to "Suburban Housewives," for one example. Or his complete focus on what he calls "law and order," but which is really just a massive scare tactic to panic people into voting for him.
The best response to Trump's whopper of a Big Lie came from Kristin Urquiza, whose father died of COVID-19 after following Trump's advice to resume normal activities (and who spoke so movingly at the Democratic National Convention). Urquiza was pretty blunt in her dismissal of Trump -- even though she takes his gigantic lie at face value:
"That betrayal of my father and our country is even more clear now," Urquiza told members of the press in a call organized by the Biden campaign Thursday. "If Donald Trump had told the public what he had told Bob Woodward in private, thousands of lives could have been spared including my dad's."
. . .
"Sure, my dad did not panic, but instead he died," Urquiza said Thursday. "I'd much rather have dealt with a father who was a little scared versus one that was led to his death."
Trump's record is crystal-clear. The only thing he didn't want to panic, back in the spring, was the stock market. Throughout his entire presidency, he has been telling us all to panic about things that simply aren't worth panicking over. He blows all of them completely out of proportion, or he just makes stuff up off the cuff. If it weren't for him, life as we know it would end instantly. This is the message he's conveyed all along, and it is what his entire re-election campaign is built upon as well.
Ironically, when something did come along that we all should have panicked over (at least a little bit) -- a disease more deadly than any in the past century -- this was the one time Trump decided to tell us all not to panic. When a little healthy panic would have helped things considerably, Trump refused to go there. He's been wrong on all of his false panics, and he was wrong when he should have panicked.
This is why: "I don't want people to be frightened. I don't want to create panic." is now in the running for "the biggest lie Trump has ever told."
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Here's some encouraging news about the Post Officer's ability to handle the projected 60 million mail-in ballots.
Nicely done, CW! I wonder if any other media will pick up on this seemingly obvious rebuttal of Trumpian lies and justifications.
Well, your Mission Statement says you want to go where the other media hasn't (yet.)
What's nice about this particular unmasking of Trump is that it absolutely does not depend on any anonymous sources or any interpretation by mainstream news outlets or any accusations by political rivals. It consists entirely of Trump's own words, recorded in his own voice, flatly contradicting himself--to the point where Kayleigh McEnany had to say "Trump never downplayed the virus" after Trump said, "I was downplaying the virus."
Let us not forget that Trump has warned that Biden, if elected, will:
1. Take away all of our guns.
2. Will prevent you from going to church.
3. Kill God.
4. Allow gang members to move next door to you and into your neighborhood! (I cannot wait to see THOSE episodes of House Hunters!)
Here's good news about how to ramp up Covid testing in America. Threy are faster and cheaper but less accurate, yet can augment the gold-standard PCR tests.
Mass-producing a cheap thing fast is, as it happens, something the United States is very good at, and something this country has done before. During the Second World War, the U.S. realized that the most effective way of shipping goods to Europe was not to use the fastest ship, but to use cheap “Liberty ships,” which were easy to mass-produce. The Allies “created this model of a ship that was kind of cheap, not as fast as they could make it, and not as good as they could make it,” Mark Wilson, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told us. “They were building cheap—one might say disposable—ships. They weren’t very good. But they just wanted to out-volume their opponents.”
We must out-volume the virus, and what will matter is not the strength of any one individual ship, but the strength of the system it is part of.
Here's a look at our rivalry with China called Why the U.S. Will Outcompete China.
The U.S. political system certainly has problems. But democracy is the best machine ever invented for generating enormous power, wealth, and prestige on the international stage.
MTC 5-
I posted that article back on Tuesday.. but I think I was too close for it to get noticed due to the new article.
The E25bio test along with 6 or 7 others that have pre-printed in theory would show great promise from a public health standpoint, But, and it is the big BUT they all have an uphill battle to get approval as they rely on assumed human behaviors.
Looking at it from the home test perspective it relies on the assumed behavior that a person who receives a positive result will self report and self isolate. Unfortunately as we have seen from trump campaign stops (not to mention the rnc south lawn extravaganza), college students and their parties, and from people who just plain don't care about others we know that this will not be the case.
Now if they were trying to get approval for the test to be offered in a controlled fashion I.E. at places of business, office buildings, schools, ect., ect. where the test process is monitored, test results are monitored, the person who tests positive has their information captured, reported for contract tracing and are refused entry and directed to self-isolate they would have a better chance of getting the FDA EUA. Performance of the test as delineated above is a) in close conformity to the reporting requirements required by the pandemic emergency health declaration. B) checks more of the boxes for the requirements of the FDA pandemic EUA process. C) falls within the parameters for PREP act liability waivers.
Unfortunately the test creators and the author don't really address the gaping loop hole that home testing presents within that article. Without developing a way to address the home testing issues the FDA is not going to change regulations to allow the test as they are currently approaching it.
It's a great concept, but it does need some things addressed to really make it a true public health tool.
hurricanes! in alabama!
Always the troll, Fat Donny put Kentucky's current attorney general (who continues to drag his feet on the Brionna Taylor case) on his list of potential supreme court appointees. Moscow Mitch's part in our national disaster should never be forgotten.
Trolling the people they hate is all his death cult zombies really want from the orange one and he delivers. That's why they can't be moved.
Wind turbines cause cancer.
And just think -- if sea to shining sea chaos messes up your cable connection you can just walk out your front door and behold it with your own eyes.
Here's a Thursday Talking Point Attempt. Because why not?
Although you Republicans and Conservatives disagree with us on various things that doesn't make you one bit more nor one bit less American than us Democrats and Progressives.
WE are not your "The Enemy" and YOU are not ours, hello!?
***AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION!***
Should I chop the "hello!?" or not? Like, are there demographics or corners of the Interwebs out there that won't understand "Hello!?"
[12]
I'm looking for "short and punchy" so it might actually be deployed in a conversation with your Republican relative or friends.
The reason MtnCaddy here in California has a say on Confederacy Memory Lane statues down in your Alabam' is because if your State receives any money from Our Federal Government that's my tax dollars and Army service mixed in there! You Christofacists have your Hyde Amendment. I DEMAND a MtnCaddy Amendment!
(thinking)
And I have OTHER demands too. So don't be confusing me with One Demand.
***AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION!***
D'ya suppose the Christofacists is, er, a bit much? I'd never be mistaken for anybody channelling my Inner Gandhi.
[14] was another Thursday Talking Point Attempt, BTW.
"Enough is too much!" as Mrs. Meldrum, my Parcels Middle School Art teacher would say!
We'll call it "Two for Thursday" and call it a wrap.
[14]
And when you combine wind turbans with 5G towers your dog gets cancer, too.
[10], I mean
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D'ya suppose that this post would get enhanced attention if the two of us split the changed each item from just text to a link to each item's proof? A lotta work but if it garnered significantly more eyeballs...
Chris,
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Chris d'ya suppose this excellent post would attract more eyeballs if you and I split the list and added each item's supporting link, ala "a href"? It'd be a lot of work but I'm down for it if it gets you more attention.
I guess I overdid the coffee. Here's a couple of contributions:
Waterfalls -- TLC
Genius of Love -- Tom Tom Club
Wait. You mean it's not Sunday?
CW-
"Trump's entire political persona is built around panic, it's pretty plain to see."
As Trump has pointed out in several interviews - which can be found on YouTube - his persona is based upon the doctrine of Positive Thinking - "If I believe it, it will happen." This is, of course, nonsense - or to use the more technical term "Magical Thinking."
Magical Thinking is what drives Multi Level Marketing Schemes - which are Ponzi Schemes with a loose fitting legal fig leaf that keeps things decent in some of the looser jurisdictions in the Multiverse. Those who bought into Trump Fo Life early got themselves cushy, albeit short lived, cabinet positions*. Most everybody else got a garage full of social distancing and a promise of $1200 at some point in the future. An unlucky few got sick or dead.
* AKA "Grift Stations"
MtnCaddy
19
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What is this tacky shit!?
;)
MtnCaddy-5
Mass production is something we used to be good at. We are now good at mass marketing something built by somebody else. That is a critical distinction.
The Liberty Ship wasn't a bad ship. It was good,simple, cheap tramp steamer that could be built with what was available by whoever wasn't drafted. Once the brittle:ductile inflection temperature problem was understood - and worked around - they stopped breaking apart in cold waters. They took battle damage reasonably well. The survivors had unexpectedly long civilian careers after the war.
Death Harris,
It's truly astonishing that CW puts up with your sickening shit. I sincerely hope that today is your red card day.
The musical choices at Drumpf's Klan rallies are always hard to understand. You Can't Always Get What You Want? Keep On Rocking In The Free World? WTF?
Last night it was Fortunate Son. Who makes these choices? What are they trying to say? It seems like they're mocking their own death cult zombies who don't seem to get it.
y'know, there's a word for trying to make people afraid for political purposes. what was today's date again?
Death Harris,
Maybe it was Trump's way of acknowledging the plight of all those getting evicted.
I'm unsurprised that you'd give the orange one some charitable spin, but maybe you're as clueless as those zombies about that song.
Death Harris,
What sickening ca-ca?
Feign ignorance if you like. It fits you like a glove. I don't believe that it'll help you avoid the red card. He already told you that you're not welcome here.
Death Harris,
YMCA is most definitely not about people getting evicted even if the orange one cared about that and he doesn't. Your explanation for your BS is just about as convincing as his are.
Death Harris,
Calling CW a liar because he is not idiotic enough to promote your idiotic grifter website was addressed in my original comment. Sickening.
Your I'm rubber, you're glue trolling is tired and unimaginative which is just what we should all expect from you after one glance at your website.
Death Harris,
CW has never agreed to promote your website. You are lying, not him.
I do regret calling it a grifter website, though. That's an insult to grifters. You can't even find any marks and I'm the flawed one? LOL
@don,
today is 9/11, and the word is terrorism. bin laden's planning killed 3,000 americans. donald trump's complete lack of planning has so-far killed 190,000. assigning equal blame for this to biden and the democrats (or obama, or even george w. bush) really is dumb. some things (like OD's failure, for another example) really are just one guy's fault.
JL
@CW,
so, how about finally agreeing to fight trump's terrorism with pie!
JL
Death Harris,
Calling CW a liar is not an adult discussion. It's an unfounded assertion and it's just more of the same trolling that he told you to stop.
Your twisted belief that his mission statement applies to you does not mean that it does. You are delusional. What you refer to as "reality" is a perception of the world that is shared by no one but you or you'd have located a mark or two by now.
I don't dodge. Your "idea" is simple-minded and your website is worse.
Death Harris,
Here is exactly what CW's website says:
This blog's purpose is to present to the public one man's view of politics.
There is no wiggle room there. It doesn't say anything about promoting a crackpot's scam.
[46]
If someone says they are going where other media hasn't (as Mtn Caddy put in his comment regarding CW's Mission Statement), then they do not go where other media hasn't that is a lie.
Yeah, but just because CW won't plug OD (since you've proven unable to on your own) doesn't mean he is lying. Going "where other media won't" does not mean going someplace stupid just to make Don Harris happy.
You've had so many chances to address Weigantia's various issues and doubts about OD -- it's not like you've been ignored. But you've passed on these chances and that's why OD is a big nothing burger.
More trolling.
Trotting out the false equivalency claim again?
in all seriousness, what on earth are you referring to? i made a comparison between the consequences of trump and bin laden trying to instill fear in americans [27], which you responded to by making a completely different (and completely unrelated) comparison between trump and biden [30]. i redirected the comparison back the original point, which is that one man's actions caused each of those tragedies [39]. your response [42] reads like gobbledygook.
JL
Death Harris
29
One Demand is something that other media has not addressed.
Congratulations, Death. You're not just a failure on your own website, you're a failure all over the Internet.
It is the very definition of what CW says in his mission statement that he will inform citizens about.
Oh, I see the problem here: You have reading comprehension issues and are the very definition of moron. We know this because of your bio and your inability to retain information.
This issue has been covered here... so let's review:
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Of course you hope today is my red card day. Then you would not have to deal with reality.
Since you brought it up, let's discuss the inability to "deal with reality":
*
Reality says you're a troll.
So to recap: CW has chosen to speak quite clearly for "ALL" of us... except you.
Death Harris
37
If someone says they will do something and then doesn't do it- they are lying.
Which is exactly why you're a fool to keep prattling on and on about your monomania when you were promised a Red Card if you kept doing it.
But as you can't argue the facts you resort to trying to denigrate me and One Demand with baseless accusations of an idiotic grifter website.
FACT: Your political opinions aren't facts.
FACT: Your website contains false information regarding voting.
FACT: It is a felony in multiple jurisdictions to disseminate voting misinformation.
FACT: Anyone who promoted your political opinions encouraging disenfranchisement of voters would be subjecting themselves to possible legal liability for disseminating voting misinformation.
nypoet22
39
today is 9/11, and the word is terrorism. bin laden's planning killed 3,000 americans. donald trump's complete lack of planning has so-far killed 190,000. assigning equal blame for this to biden and the democrats (or obama, or even george w. bush) really is dumb. some things (like OD's failure, for another example) really are just one guy's fault.
^^^ This ^^^ Exactly this. ^^^
The only thing missing is the wonderfulness of pie. :)
nypoet22
40
so, how about finally agreeing to fight trump's terrorism with pie!
The wonderfulness of pie! :)
Death Harris
41
Again with doubling down on an argument with yourself instead of addressing what I post?
No one is required to address your bullshit. NO ONE.
As a public figure CW is fair game for being pressed to provide an answer.
As a troll, Don Harris is fair game to be ignored and ignored and ignored. CW is much better at this than me, I freely confess.
Just because you want and need it to be one thing to fit what you want to believe doesn't change the reality that it is not what you claim it is.
*laughs* Hysterical... and incorrect.
Your obvious error begins with the nonsensical notion that somebody would actually "want" or "need" to believe anything about it. That shit is your monomaniacal fantasy and no one else's.
Don Harris
43
Before you wrote up the MDDOTW award you need to see the Jimmy Dore video about what Biden tells Wall Street donors behind closed doors.
Why don't you shove Jimmy Dore up your ass? I'm sure Ralph Nader would love some company. :)