What would you think if you heard someone say, “If I don’t check the weather, it won’t rain on my picnic!”? I guess the answer depends on the context. It could be a tongue in cheek joke, or it could be an expression of a very disconnected concept about how reality interacts with absurd human beliefs. It could also be a statement made as part of a strategy to confuse or persuade you, or draw on your emotions. Misconceptions about reality arising from a strong belief in the supernatural and reinforced by a distrust of science and the opinions of experts were common a few hundred years ago, but in our “enlightened world” it takes a special genius to regularly convince vulnerable people to deny the connection between facts and reality. Such a talented person can more than imagine that he has the ability to change opinions, and outcomes by distorting or denying facts. The real world can be presented as an illusion if it doesn’t fit your objectives. Our president has a world class talent for using absurd statements as political dog whistles that make a lot of sense in the context of self interest magnified by the emotions and biases of his followers. If you think the absurdities are a joke, the joke is on you.
The world is full of people who will rush to an absurd idea that speaks to their wants and fears. Do you know anyone who is apprehensive about letting their children be vaccinated? We all know that there are many who believe global warming is a hoax. It is acceptable to say that poverty is a function of personal deficiencies that a worthy person can overcome by strength of character, or if they would just “get right with God.” Now we must decide if the president was joking when he seemed to say that if we did not test so much we would not have as big a problem with the coronavirus. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post put the question in perspective in a piece entitled “Trump’s best excuse for his testing remark is still horrifying.” She writes:
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At least three explanations could account for President Trump’s remark at his Tulsa rally on Saturday that “I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down,’” seemingly a reference to his oft-repeated and inane declaration that if we would just stop counting cases, there would be fewer cases. (If we stop going to the dentist, do we get fewer cavities? Stop looking at the scale, and we don’t gain weight?)
The truth is that if this line were a joke last Saturday was not the first time the president has tried it out. The Hill reported the same idea in a piece written five days earlier by Nathaniel Weixal entitled “Trump on coronavirus: ‘If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.’” The Hill article pointed out that the Vice President seemed to be on the same page in his recent comments. It is a fact that in his recent Wall Street Journal op ed piece he said that there was no second wave on the horizon and it was time to move on. That opinion has drawn sharp criticism.
There are few people that I know who trust either the president or the vice president’s scientific expertease. What we enjoyed in March and April was the counterpoint offered by Dr. Anthony Fauci, but it has been many weeks since there has been evidence that Dr. Fauci is having much impact on the administration’s COVID-19 pandemic management strategy. Since mid April, the focus has been on reopening the economy, and not on managing the virus. It follows that if you are not going to try to limit the spread of the virus, why would you want to measure the number of people who have it?
Returning to Jennifer Rubin’s analysis she offers three explanations which I will present to you interspersed with my take on each possibility:
First, he could actually have said it to his aides in keeping with his insistence at the beginning of the pandemic that there were 15 people detected with the virus “and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” This would mean Trump is incapable of grasping the most elementary principles of science and leading us during a pandemic when testing and tracing are critical.
I know the president has an act that suggests that he does not recognize the validity of science and facts just like he pretends to believe that “good people” can be white supremicists. What is most important to him is his own agenda. He knows that there are people who don’t trust science and he feigns a disbelief in science to attract their attention while creating frustration for those who are offended by his act that he has disagreements with science. I think Rubin wants us to see his hoax. She wants us to avoid saying that he is dumb. Even this president, who has exaggerated his disdain for science, doesn’t really believe that the virus isn’t a real concern. His number one concern is himself, and reality takes a distant second to that fact. Whether it is news reporting or science, calling it fake or disregarding its message fits nicely into his ultimate need to control the conversation.
I’ve got to believe that even as he tries to convince as many of his most trusting and gullible supporters that the virus is a hoax, he knows it is a very inconvenient threat. As it undermined his case that he had built the best economy in the world, his only defense was to create more and more confusion and play on the emotions of as many people as possible. Having the press talk about his absurd position is much better than an accurate discussion of his objective failures.
He contradicts himself to his own advantage. He announced that the pandemic was a threat back in mid March, and for a while he was on board, though late, with attempts to flatten the curve. I must believe that he is capable of grasping the significant threat that the virus is to the health of the nation. He can also grasp how the virus and the impact of his mismanagement undermines his expectations for re-election. His greatest hope is not in defeating the virus, or in repairing the economy. His greatest hope is that his supporters are impressed by his belligerent behavior, that his detractors become confused and frustrated by his dangerous and ill advised policies to the point that somehow earnest people give up, and their frustration coupled with voting suppression, and a good turnout from his minority, produces a majorities in “red states” that give him a second term, like his first term, gained not through an actual majority of those who vote, but through the distorted process of the electoral college.
Rubin’s second point:
Second, he could have been boasting that he said such a thing — because he somehow thinks it is a clever solution to making the statistics look less horrible — but he did not actually say it to anyone with authority to reduce testing. Once more, this suggests he has no ability to discern between critical tasks (e.g., testing) and his own nonsense — nor does he know what will offend or shock people with a conscience and a rudimentary understanding of the virus.
This explanation is disturbing, but consistent with his “shot from the hip,” “go with your gut,” business genius facade and lack of adherence to the norms of responsible management. I must disagree with her suggestion that he might not know what he is doing. He is setting up the moment to his advantage. His greatest ability is his talent for introducing doubt and confusion. He is not a problem solver. He is a master of creating problems and controversies that advance his self serving objectives. His approach is to introduce an element of confusing “twist” that makes some people think that he is a genius, the chosen one. In many articles and books written by past members of the administration, and those who have had dealings with him, there is no doubt that he does not operate within the norms of usual management. I would direct you to the book A Warning, published anonymously by a “senior Trump Administration Official” who also published an “anonymous” op ed in the New York Times in 2018. In the OP Ed Anonymous writes:
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Anonymous continues the analysis:
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
Rubin’s second explanation is certainly consistent with the observations of “Anonymous.” I think both of them don’t give him credit for his effective methodology. He is not interesting in governing, and he does not have the ability to lead a government. He is interested in being the center of attention, and he is a master of getting the attention he wants by frustrating those who want him to govern.
Third, the excuse Trump chose, was that he was “joking,” his all-purpose excuse when he says something stupid even though there is zero evidence he was being humorous. (And what is humorous about reducing the number of tests?) At the very least, then, Trump is entirely cavalier and unfeeling about the nearly 120,000 Americans who have died and more than 2 million who have been infected.
This is also true and as disturbing as explanation number two. Rubin continues by recording the responses of the Biden campaign and Nancy Pelosi:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her own statement seemed to take Trump’s remark at face value. “Testing, tracing, treatment and social distancing are the only tools we have to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but President Trump orders his Administration to slow down the testing that saves lives,” she said. “The President’s efforts to slow down desperately needed testing to hide the true extent of the virus mean more Americans will lose their lives.” She summed up: “The President is ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared to lead. Senator McConnell must stop obstructing the Heroes Act and the life-saving testing resources it provides.”
Pelosi did not go far enough. She implied, but did not say that the president was so amoral (a kinder term than immoral) that he would sacrifice lives as part of a reelection strategy. The problem that the testing causes is that it is showing that efforts to reopen the economy are increasing the number of those infected, those hospitalized, and eventually the number who will die is increasing as states that are not ready to reopen continue their headlong processes of reopening when they have not controlled the virus.
The airways and Internet are full of public service advice to wear masks and continue social distancing. The airways and Internet also demonstrate that a significant minority have had enough of the virus and have defaulted to acting as if it did not exist. The president’s refusal to wear a mask and his suggestion that we are testing too much are a “dog whistle” to that impatient minority that he hears their concerns and supports their defiance of science and good judgement, as both contradict their self serving self interest and his. We may soon hear that the economic miseries that will plague the country for years were caused by the overly cautious epidemiologists that he fought for the sake of the economy. In his senario, he is not an idiot, but a hero to those who share his common sense and can see the pompous and irrational errors of the “enlightened.”
There is no doubt that the Tulsa event was a bust as a kick off event for his campaign against Joe Biden. He suffered humiliation when he viewed the empty seats even though he tried to make the most of it with his usual rhetoric. There were racist remarks about the origin of the virus. He called for sympathy from a press that is trying to build a case that he may be ill by going on for several minutes in an attempt to debunk the idea that at his ill conceived appearance at West Point he needed two hands to drink water.
We know that even though the crowd that gathered for his “joke” and his demonstration of one handed drinking from a glass was smaller than he expected for whatever reason, he will not be deterred from offering more of his supporters the opportunity to play chicken with the virus by attending rallies. Another “rally” is scheduled for a Phoenix, Arizona church today. There were many more planned, but after the bust in Tulsa plans are being revisited, but I expect that his TKO in Tulsa will be hard for him to forget. My bet is that he will attempt to show that he can draw a crowd to hear his lies. I know from his presentation of lies at rallies in the past that when he ventures out again there will be many more lies to come. The New York Times has published an article that fact checks his Tulsa speech. It is good to review his Tulsa misstatements and distortions of the truth because that exercise gives us a preview of his 2020 disinformation plan. Here is the crop that the Times documented in his Tulsa speech.
- The first whopper was the disinformation around testing. Enough said.
- He claimed that there were agitators outside who blocked entrances. There weren’t.
- He announced that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be in charge of environmental policy for the Democrats. She is one of eight members of a task force on climate change launched by Biden and Bernie Sanders. You can expect that she will be a common target.
- He claimed that Biden would decriminalize illegal border crossings and give free healthcare to illegal immigrants. Not so on either count.
- “Biden is a puppet for China — son walked out with $1.5 billion.” Not true.
- “We’ve spent over $2 trillion to completely rebuild the unmatched strength and power of the United States military.” Misleading, the armed services did not need rebuilding, nor were they completely rebuilt. He added up the military budgets for the last three years. We spent more every year between 2007 and 2012 than in any of the last three years.
- “The murder rate in Baltimore and Detroit is higher than El Salvador, Guatemala or even Afghanistan.” Partially true but misleading.
- On NATO: “They’re delinquent, for many years they’re delinquent. They haven’t been paying what they’re supposed to be paying. They’re paying 1 percent instead of 2 percent, and 2 percent is a very low number.” Not quite true. Germany has not paid the 2% goal, but is not “delinquent.”
- On Iran: “President Obama gave them $150 billion for nothing.” Misleading and wrong. 150 billion is an exaggeration of Iranian assets that had been frozen. Some of them, but not all ,were released when the deal on Iran’s nuclear future was concluded by the Obama administration. Substantial gains were made that he threw away against advice from leaders within his own administration and our allies..
There are many things that our president could have discussed in the two hours that he talked. He spent more time explaining why he looked unsteady on his feet coming down a ramp at West Point than any other subject he discussed. It’s been tough recently for this man, but it is much too early to dare imagine that he will be a one term president. I am expecting that my copy of John Bolton’s book will arrive tomorrow. I have always had concerns about Bolton’s approach to world affairs, but it is remarkable that someone who was so close to the president fears that our democracy can not survive two terms of Trump and his “jokes.”
