#trumpnesia

People need to be reminded of Trump's woeful incompetence which came to a head during the pandemic emergency and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The Obama administration successfully dealt with the threats from swine flu and Ebola. There was no swine flu disaster, there was no Ebola disaster, and there was even no Zika disaster because competent people were running the US. Near the end of Obama's term, his National Security Council staff put together a 69-page playbook on how to deal with pandemic emergencies. It's called "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents". Of course Trump ignored the document and plunged the nation into COVID hell.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

Michelle Obama, in one of her best speeches ever in Kalamazoo this weekend, excoriated Trump's incompetence.

Michelle Obama laced into Donald Trump in a searing speech in Michigan on Saturday, accusing the former president of “gross incompetence” and having an “amoral character” while challenging hesitant Americans to choose Kamala Harris for US president. “By every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready,” the former first lady told a rapt audience in Kalamazoo. “The real question is, as a country, are we ready for this moment?” [ ... ] In raw and strikingly personal terms, she asked why Harris was being held to a “higher standard” than her opponent. Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election should alone be disqualifying, Obama argued. But now the people who worked closest with him when he was president – his former advisers and cabinet secretaries – had stepped forward with a warning that he should not be allowed to return to power.

ICYMI, here is Michelle Obama's speech in Michigan.

Too many people have been afflicted by Trumpnesia. They seem to have forgotten the catastrophe that happened starting on 22 January 2020 when the first COVID infection was discovered on US soil. On that day Trump told CNBC: "we have it totally under control" and "it's going to be just fine".

Instead of following Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, Trump did the usual bullshit Trump things like criticize the Oscars and rage-tweet from the bathroom. He belatedly declared a state of emergency on Friday the 13th of March – the day after the stock market crashed.

Don't let anybody in real life get away with describing the Trump years as some sort of utopia.

— Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine (archived).

The burden is on us to go the extra mile in this election to preserve democracy. Part of that is to highlight Trump's most disastrous failure.

If you know anybody afflicted by Trumpnesia, the burden is on you to address that condition. It's necessary to speak up now and do so assertively.

Some people have forgotten how Trump's mishandling of the COVID-19 emergency tanked the economy. There was the Trump COVID recession, the HŪGE spike in unemployment, and the supply chain issues and need to heavily stimulate spending to prevent another Great Depression which drove inflation for a couple of years.

COVID-19 was an international crisis. But some countries handled it much better than others. Under Trump, the US had the worst per capita death rate of all the G-7 countries.

The Trump White House was actually giving out quack medical advice such as recommending that people take Hydroxychloroquine – an anti-malaria drug which also acts as an immunosuppressant. The last thing you need when fighting an infection is an immunosuppressant. Trump also recommended that Americans drink bleach.

Reminding people in the next week or two of how catastrophic the last year of the Trump administration was may be the best way to preserve American democracy.

A more accurate slogan for the Trump 2024 campaign...

☭ Putting Putin First ☭

Even the Kremlin admits that Trump gave Putin COVID-19 testing devices at a time when they were rare and badly needed by Americans.

Kremlin refutes Trump denial on sending Putin COVID tests

Did Trump, the savvy business genius, even make Putin pay for those testing materials? 🤔

Do you know any of the people experiencing Trumpnesia? They need a gentle reminder of how Trump's incompetent response to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US led to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths and a chain of events which screwed the economy starting with the recession which began in March of 2020.

This clip is from 11 March 2020. It features Rep. Adam Schiff speaking with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. This is around the time Trump was sending COVID testing equipment to Putin while Americans were becoming increasingly worried about the spread of the virus.

Rep. Schiff: "And because there's so little testing, we don't know how widespread this is on the Hill – let alone anywhere else in the country."

Of course the Kremlin was covered while people were already dying in the US.

Some context. The virus first appeared in the US on January 22nd. Trump dismissed it as unimportant and downplayed it from day one.

We know it wasn't "just fine". Trump continued to do stupid Trumpian things like criticize the Oscar awards on Twitter as COVID spread throughout the US. He did not declare a state of emergency until Friday the 13th of March – 51 days after the first case was discovered in the US and two days after Rep. Schiff's comments above.

If you like stats, here are some from Scientific American from a few weeks after Trump left office. .

In the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, more than 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19, and life expectancy fell by 1.13 years, the biggest decrease since World War II. Many of the deaths were avoidable; COVID-19 mortality in the U.S. was 40 percent higher than the average of the other wealthy nations in the Group of Seven (G7). [ ... ] However, we also found that Americans' health began lagging before Trump took office. In 1980, U.S. life expectancy was similar to that of other G7 nations; by 2018 it was 3.4 years shorter. 461,000 deaths would have been averted in 2018 if U.S. life expectancy had kept pace with the rest of the G7. That’s equivalent to the number of Americans who died from COVID-19 last year. Faced with the pandemic, Trump suppressed scientific data, delayed testing, mocked and blocked mask-wearing, and convened mass gatherings where social distancing was impossible.

I'm not sure if there is a cure for Trumpnesia, but there are treatments.

This is what Trump was saying at CNBC the day after the first case of COVID-19 appeared in the US.

Trump dawdled while the virus spread throughout the US. He continued to claim it wasn't a big deal.

The spectacle of the Dow Jones plummeting on March 12th could jar a memory or two. It signaled the start of the Trump recession.

On the following day, Friday the 13th, Trump belatedly declared a state of emergency.

In April he held daily media events where he gave out bad medical advice. If he had been a doctor, that would have gotten him charged with malpractice. He first told viewers to take malaria medicine for COVID. [Malaria is a parasitic disease while COVID is a virus.] He then suggested that people stick UV lights up their butts. And he famously told people to drink bleach. This t-shirt was a reaction to that...

All that year he downplayed COVID-19 as the US death toll and infection rate skyrocketed.

Timeline: How Trump Has Downplayed The Coronavirus Pandemic

It's true that the virus spread everywhere. But the United States had the highest death rate per million of any G7 country. Only Boris "Partygate" Johnson's UK came close.