Month: April 2020

 

According to reporting by the New York Times, last November, former President Biden said that he was concerned that as President Trump’s political situation worsens he may become increasingly erratic and prone to do anything to hold onto the office. After all, it appears that the only thing that protects him from criminal indictment in New York because of his many crimes is holding the office of the presidency.

In January, Mr. Biden commented, “He still has another nine or ten months, God knows what can happen.” And just a few days ago, Biden upped the stakes a bit and said that Trump might try to postpone or disrupt the election. “Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”

The polls have turned sharply against Trump in recent weeks indicating that Biden could be likely to win in November and win decisively. This is in the wake of President Trump’s almost unbelievably bad mismanagement of the huge crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic downturn. The month of April, 2020 has been one of the worst in American history with a death total approaching that of the Vietnam War. Trump has now confirmed beyond a doubt that he lacks the ability to lead the United States in a crisis much less hold the office of the presidency. It is now clear that it is dangerous to have him sitting in the Oval Office, especially at this time, but really at any time.

But he has no power to delay the election. It is by law held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. It has been held on this date since 1845, to change the date would require an Act of Congress, legislation that would be highly unlikely to be approved by the House of Representatives, and probably not the Senate either. And the Constitution requires the new Congress to be seated on January 3, 2021 and the new President sworn in by January 20.

But the President can try to disrupt the election, make it as difficult to vote as possible and thereby increase his chances. These efforts have been underway for some time. They include adoption by Republican legislatures of voter ID laws, of greater and greater difficulty to meet. More recently Trump has been attempting to undermine voting by mail, which has been in use in this country for nearly 30 years. Trump has denounced it as encouraging fraud which has, of course, no basis in fact. It is the best way to vote during an epidemic. Democrats in the Congress are seeking legislation by the Congress protecting those states that wish to use it. As a result of this and other efforts in the states to oppose voter suppression, this tactic appears at the time to be unlikely to benefit Trump very much. The national opposition to him is now much too strong. Americans have a long history of non-partisan action when the survival or essential well being of the country is recognized to be at stake, as it is now.

So, perhaps Biden is likely to win, what comes next from Trump? In thinking about this, we should turn to the testimony before Congress of Trump’s former lawyer and close advisor, Michael Cohen.

In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in February of 2019, Cohen stated at the end of his day long testimony a sort of a coda:

“Indeed, given my experience working for him, Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there never will be a peaceful transition of power, and that is why I agreed to appear before you today.”

We should all heed Mr. Cohen’s words. He probably knows him better than anyone. He was Trump’s personal attorney and so-called “fixer” for ten years. This was the first time that anyone who worked closely with Trump has publicly cast doubt on whether Trump having lost an election, would carry out probably the most fundamental act of this democracy, or any democracy and peacefully transfer the power of the presidency to his opponent.

It has been reported that nationwide, right-wing conservative groups and individuals have been buying guns at a high rate. The possibility of some kind of violence to stop the transfer of power from President Trump to Vice-President Biden cannot be completely ruled out. There are seven weeks between election day and Inauguration Day. Governors and their staffs and the leaders of various state National Guards should be alert, prepared and in touch during this period and perhaps before. American democracy could be at stake.

Our Founders understood this problem well. Here are a few comments.

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”  Samuel Adams, 1771

“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned in the United States, it is, that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive…written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.  James Madison, 1793

John Jay

The President presses for an early end to the quarantine against the coronavirus and prompt reopening of the economy of the United States against all scientific medical advice. First, he was for an Easter opening and then settles in on May 1. The medical community and its scientists urge the end of May or perhaps even the middle of June. The quarantine and social distancing are the best weapons currently available against the virus. The President wants to do this, he says, to save the economy but that isn’t really the reason as many attest. It is to advance his own political situation and enhance his prospect of electoral success in November. Finally, his science advisors agree to a strict set of procedures which if followed by a state would not be likely to trigger a second wave of the pandemic should a state begin to reopen its economy on or about May 1.

As soon as this happens, the President takes to Twitter to undermine his own criteria so a state will throw caution to the winds. He tweets, “Liberate Minnesota,” “Liberate Michigan,” “Liberate Virginia.” The tweet targets Democratic states, but the real targets are states where Trump-leaning politicians are in the Governor’s office. Gradually, this misguided approach is adopted by some state legislators. The Tea Party and other right-wing allies of the President are led to equate medical protective measures such as social distancing and quarantines with tyranny— utter and complete dangerous childish foolishness. And as the President’s tweets urge, some states begin to open, contrary to scientific advice.

So, what we have is, as Michael Gerson wrote recently in his column entitled “To reform the GOP vote Biden” published in the Washington Post, “A failed presidency defended by a cowed party. As President Trump’s malignant narcissism and incompetence have been fully revealed—and can be objectively measured by the level of needless death from Covid-19—his approval among Republicans has remained strong. Across a continent filled with elected Republicans, only a few have taken a stand for sanity and effective governance.”

And for weeks President Trump touts the use of the anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer,” in his words, for promptly curing COVID-19. This was under consideration in some laboratories until the Food and Drug Administration in late April published the results of a study which indicated that the use of these drugs with COVID-19 patients could promote dangerous irregular heart rhythms and possible death. Cases of serious poisoning and death from using these drugs had been reported.

What is said by the President on his bully pulpit in the White House is always taken seriously by a sizeable portion of the American people no matter how confused and irrational and self-serving any particular statement might be. In promoting the use of the two anti-malarial drugs to treat COVID-19, President Trump said, “I think that it could be something incredible,” the two drugs had shown “very, very encouraging results.” There had been little study of these drugs being used for this purpose, but even so, first time prescriptions poured into retail pharmacies around the country at 46 times the usual rate per average weekday, according to an analysis by the New York Times. These drugs were tested and showed no effect on reducing the impact of COVID-19 on patients. But they do create very serious risks for a COVID-19 patient that takes them, even after the FDA report these drugs were being prescribed and purchased at pharmacies more than six times the normal rate. With leadership like this, is there any doubt why the United States’ efforts against the coronavirus have had among the world’s worst results? The U.S. has four percent of the world’s population and 32 percent of the cases.

Finally, perhaps the ultimate dangerous idea put forward by President Trump during these recent weeks of dealing with the coronavirus took place the evening of April 24. The President promoted the use of disinfectants internally in the human body to cure the virus-caused disease. Disinfectants like Lysol, Clorox or isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) injected like a tonic into the human body, and maybe this just might do the trick.

From a report in the New York Times, the President said, and then “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute.” (on a tabletop like surface) “One minute.  And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Immediately there was an outcry in the medical, business and some parts of the political community along the lines of what every ten year-old child knows, that injecting such products as Lysol, Clorox and isopropyl alcohol into the human body would create an immediate severe reaction and often death. An FDA Commissioner said, “I certainly wouldn’t recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant.” The Environmental Protection Agency advised people never to “ingest disinfectant products.” The companies that make such disinfectant products publicly pleaded with Americans to never ingest or inject their products, they are not ever to be used internally in the human body.

Again, from the New York Times report, “In Maryland, so many callers flooded a health hotline with questions that the state’s Emergency Management Agency had to issue a warning that ‘under no circumstances’ should any disinfectant be taken to treat the coronavirus. The alarm was sounded by officials everywhere across the country. “Injecting bleach or highly concentrated rubbing alcohol ‘causes massive organ damage and the blood cells in the body to basically burst’…the medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System said in an interview. ‘It can definitely be a fatal event.’”

If it wasn’t clear to everyone before, this incident should convince everyone in the country it’s not only just unwise to keep this man in office, but positively dangerous in a time of crisis. It is akin to national suicide for him to remain in the office of President for much longer. Whatever is going on, it is certainly not natural and effective leadership. The President’s involvement in this crisis has only seemed to make it very much worse.

Originally the evening White House briefing on the pandemic was established by the President’s Task Force on the virus as a means to communicate facts about the virus to the American people. The speakers were world renowned scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci. But when he saw how popular these briefings were with the public, the President rudely pushed the scientists aside and did the briefings himself. He converted what had been a scientific briefing so the public could know more about the virus into a Trump political rally disguised as a briefing. In this way, the President could promote his foolish, dangerous and counterproductive ideas as advice to the American people as to what they should do to protect themselves during the pandemic. Doubtless thousands of deaths have taken place that wouldn’t have if the White House leadership had been in sound and practical hands.

Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times reported in her column on April 25, among other things:

“Over the last three and a half years, Americans have had to accustom themselves to a relentless, numbing barrage of lies from the federal government. In one sector after another, we’ve seen experts systematically purged and replaced with toadying apparatchiks. The few professionals who’ve kept their jobs have often had to engage in degrading acts of public obeisance more common to autocracies. Public policy has zigzagged to presidential whim. Empirical reality has been subsumed to Trump’s cult of personality.”

“…America was once the technological envy of the world. Now doctors have to warn the public that, contrary to the President’s musings in the briefing room, it is neither safe nor effective to inject disinfectant.”

This Administration is truly sick. Our Founders knew how to cure a sick government. Alexander Hamilton expressed it most succinctly.

“The National cure for an ill administration in a popular representative constitution is a change of men.”   Alexander Hamilton 1788

And we must never forget:

“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”  (Benjamin Franklin proposed as the motto on the Great Seal of the United Sates).

John Jay

It became clear that the Corona virus could be a threat in late December, 2019. Already in November, the U.S. Intelligence Community had notified the president that it was possible that the outbreak beginning in China could be dangerous. The Trump Administration received formal notification of the epidemic the first week of January 2020. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was diagnosed in mid-January and the first fatality from COVID-19 took place on February 29. The financial market had already begun to crash. The 100^th victim of pandemic in the U.S. died on March 17 and by March 20 there were 5,600 confirmed cases. Only on March 21 did the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services place its first large order for N-95 masks.

The President was briefed on the dangers of a pandemic around the time he entered the office of the presidency. The subsequent three years and most importantly the period between January 3, 2020 and March 21 were entirely wasted in preparing the United States in any way for a pandemic threat. The travel ban placed on China in late January was of very little significance; it applied only to non-citizens and not to citizens or residents and 40,000 people traveled from China to the United States in the next two months.

That the pandemic occurred is not President Trump’s fault of course. But, as made clear by David Frum in his article in the Atlantic Magazine of April, the “utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault.” For example, the loss of stockpiled respirators because maintenance contracts were allowed to lapse by the federal government in 2018 was his fault. The failure to store sufficient protective gear was his fault.

Amidst many other similar failures by President Trump and his allies during the critical period from January 3 to March 21 and beyond what was President Trump saying to the America people to warn them during these all-important weeks?

When the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was diagnosed in mid-January, the President, as reported by David Leonhardt in the New York Times, was asked in an interview on CNBC whether there were worries about a pandemic. He replied, “No, not at all. We have it totally under control.” But the seriousness of the epidemic was becoming clearer, there were many warnings of the danger of the virus by prominent experts in January. But he ignored these and other warnings. On January 24, he tweeted, “It will all work out well.” On January 30, he said in a speech in Michigan, “We have it well under control. We have very little problem in this country—five and they are recuperating successfully.” That same day the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus as a “public health emergency of international concern.”

In early February, the President was asked by Sean Hannity on Fox News about the virus. He replied, “Well, we pretty much shot it down coming from China (referring to the ban on travel from China to the U.S. by non-citizens, which accomplished nothing). We have a tremendous relationship with China which is a very positive thing.” By this time there were nearly 15,000 cases worldwide, a doubling over the previous three days.

On February 5, the CDC began shipping test kits to laboratories, but they had a technical flaw. However the Trump Administration after this did little—creating a new virus test is not easy—even while other countries were working hard developing test equipment that worked. The administration was offered test equipment that was functional by the World Health Organization but turned it down. As a result, the United States fell behind South Korea, Singapore and China in fighting the epidemic. Said a Harvard epidemiologist, “We just twiddled our thumbs and the virus waltzed in.”

The President kept telling the American people that the virus was going away—warm weather would stop the virus. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he told a campaign rally on February 10. On February 19, he told a Phoenix television station, “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.” A few days later he said the virus was “very much under control…we had 12 at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.” The message for the President to the American people was clear. The coronavirus is a small problem getting better.  The truth was the U.S. didn’t know how bad the problem was as we had done very little testing. But many scientists available indications suggested it was getting worse rapidly. On February 23, the World Health Organization announced the virus was in 30 countries with 78,811 confirmed cases, a twofold increase in three weeks.

The President seemed uninterested in the pandemic, but then the stock market began to crash and he did care about that. He began blaming others, he criticized the media, CNN and MSNBC, for “panicking markets.” He said at on of his rallies, falsely, that “the Democrat policy of open borders” had brought the virus into the country. It turned out in the end to have come not from China and not from Mexico, but from Europe.

He lashed out at “do nothing Democrat comrades.” He tweeted about “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” mocking him for arguing that he should be more aggressive fighting the virus. At a rally on February 28 in South Carolina, the President denounced the Democrats by politicizing the coronavirus pandemic calling it “their new hoax.”

On multiple occasions, the President claimed that the coronavirus was less serious than the flu. “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of deaths than the flu. He said on March 2, “It’s very mild.” He said to Fox News on March 4, on March 7, “I’m not concerned at all” and on March 10, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” At this time, in the first half of March, the public began to understand. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar told ABC, “There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.” While touring the CDC, the President said on TV news channels, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” On the same newscast he brought up completely extraneous issues such as his impeachment and also suggested that he knew as much as any scientist. On March 16, the President finally called for social distancing orders to be issued by the States.

The United States and South Korea were in more or less the same place at the very beginning of the coronavirus impact on their soil. But after squandering nearly two months spent in belittling the significance of the crisis and failing to put the government to work in assembling personal protective equipment for hospital workers, rolling out a mass testing program—something that only the federal government is capable of doing—and manufacturing ventilators, the United States was in a much worse place than South Korea. The President took his first real action in calling for social distancing guidelines on March 16 and the first equipment purchase on March 21. By contrast, former Vice President Joe Biden on January 29 in an op-ed article had sounded the alarm about a coming dangerous coronavirus pandemic and called for strong responsive measures.

The United States was now far behind and by early April, the death rate from COVID-19 was 50 per capita in the United States and only four per capita in South Korea. After the many administrative failures and the President essentially ignoring the pandemic and focusing on his own personal political interests, by April 12, there were 22,000 deaths from COVID-19, far more than need have been had the Administration responded in a timely way. A few days later, there were 30,000 fatalities.

In September, 2019 there was a report by the World Health Organization Global Preparedness Monitoring Board warning of the lack of preparedness worldwide should there be a lethal respiratory virus pandemic as follows:

“A rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (which naturally emerges or is accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirements. Donors and multilateral institutions must ensure adequate investment in developing innovative vaccines and therapeutics, surge manufacturing capacity, broad spectrum antivirals and appropriate non-pharmaceutical interventions.”

The United States received formal notification of the coronavirus epidemic on January 3, and the President took his first real action on March 16. At a White House press briefing on March 13 the President said with respect to the chaos that had descended on the United States as a result of his ignoring the threat of the coronavirus and whether he took responsibility for any of this, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

This was after often-misleading Americans about the severity of the virus and therefor the public was confused about what it should do. On the one hand, all the experts in the field who addressed the subject publicly called for immediate strong actions to respond to a huge threat as did many Democratic Party political leaders. On the other hand, the President was dismissing everything saying the epidemic would “disappear like magic.” The reality which was abundantly clear weeks before the President did anything was that the United States was extremely seriously threatened by a deadly pathogen which would, if not properly checked, destroy the health, economy and lives of Americans. What would our Founders think of this inexcusable behavior amounting to the equivalent of criminal negligence if it was a legal case? I have returned from some time away from this blog, but could not in good conscience avoid saying something about this situation.

“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honor of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth—if men possessed of these and other excellent qualities are chosen to fill seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.” –Samuel Adams 1780

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know—but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefensible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents and trustees for the people, and if the cause, the intent and the trust is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys and trustees.”–John Adams 1765

“That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved, they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue…Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.”–John Hancock 1779

“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”–Samuel Adams 1748

“Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth or by an injustice…There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible as he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do so a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all it’s good dispositions.–Thomas Jefferson 1785

“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools who don’t have brains enough to be honest.”–Benjamin Franklin 1740

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”–Thomas Jefferson 1774

“A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road for the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that those men who have overturned the liberties of the republics, the greatest number have began their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”–Alexander Hamilton 1788

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for…but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, so that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by others.”–James Madison 1788

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”–Benjamin Franklin – proposed as the motto on the Great Seal of the United States

“I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”–Thomas Jefferson 1800

“A government of laws, not of men.”–John Adams 1780

“If he be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of security in a Republic? the answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last—a sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”–Alexander Hamilton 1794

“If ever the time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”–Samuel Adams 1780

“The natural cure for an ill administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.”–Alexander Hamilton 1788

“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has the right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but it is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.”–James Madison 1793

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks… Let us remember that if we suffer lamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom! It’s a very serious consideration which should deeply impress our minds that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.”–Samuel Adams 1771

“The unity of government which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so rightly prize. But it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness that you should cherish a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which link together the various parts.”–George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

John Jay