Trump said "I didn't know about" cutting pandemic response team. Here's a 2018 video of him talking about why he cut the team

One more reason Trump won’t have to worry about running out of toilet paper, unlike the common people.

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The Trump video seems to be set to autoplay. Every time I refresh the site in blog view, it starts playing.

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“I got rid of the smoke detectors because they weren’t doing anything - they were just gathering dust. If we have a fire, then I can run out and buy some new smoke detectors…”

Apparently there were issues beyond getting rid of the pandemic response team. There was some legally mandated pandemic response training for new administration staff, and like with all the briefings transition staff attended, they were notably unconcerned and totally disinterested. Adding to which, because of the high White House staff turnover, none of them even made it to this point anyways; they were gone years ago.

I listen to the questions being asked of Trump, and how they’re asked, and I’m flabbergasted that the press still don’t seem to understand who they’re dealing with. (Of course, a certain number of these might be softball questions being lobbed by the likes of Infowars…)
Still, this is how I’d imagine Trump’s response would go:
Trump: “How nasty!” (cuts off reporter’s audio before they can ask a question) “Next!”

I was thinking about how his response to this crisis shows how he’s completely unsuited, in every way, for the presidency, but it also shows his extreme, shall we say, “limits” as a businessman. No anticipation, just reaction; no concern about facts, just about appearances; everything gets treated as zero-sum rentier capitalism, where you don’t have allies or partners, but competitors and suckers that you’re ripping off. It’s clear why the only things he’s actually been successful at are fraud and money laundering.

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I am so shocked that Trump lied.

This is exactly why I’ve said that modern Republicans are ideologically unfit for governance (and that’s putting aside their moral, ethical, and intellectual unfitness).

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I have no one left to trust in the government.

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Many thought he was an acceptable front for a “reality” TV show, too – although I don’t get what the reality in a contrived competition for minor celebrities to win a fat old guy’s approval actually was. Nor did I get what the audience appeal of the show was – was it low-grade schadenfreude from watching those minor celebrities ultimately brought down?
Perhaps it will eventually dawn on President Biff’s fans that they’re never going to party at Mar O’Lardo, do their business on a solid gold can, or trundle endlessly around a golf course with a platoon of Secret Service agents trotting in attendance. Welcome to the “you’re fired!” stratum of society, to which the Orange Overlord allocated you at birth.

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I wish it was about having the guts to ask the tough questions and use Trump’s statements to impeach him (“impeach” used in litigation context, not congressional process). But sadly, it’s about credentials. If you are what Trump considers a “nasty” reporter, good luck getting back in the question seat.

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I hope, someday soon, a journalist of integrity considers it to be a risk well worth taking.

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Trump can’t keep facts straight because he has verbal diarrhea. The torrent of shit is too much to keep track of. This is probably the reason why he prefers to color his skin orange - it camouflages the shit stains around his mouth.

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I think there’s a step where “Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset.” in the middle there.

In all seriousness, this comment is spot-on.

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Why are you playing that tape? That is a very, very, very, very bad thing to do. This is what I mean when I say that the media is human scum. This is proof! Arrest that reporter! Why are Democrats trying to gang up on me? You people are terrible! What about what Obama did? That was much, much, much worse, believe me! Everybody knows that. Everything I did was perfect. My inauguration had the biggest crowds of all time, did you know that? Next question.

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Although his role in that was fundamentally another con on his part as well - pretending to be a successful businessman. (I’m totally baffled about the appeal of that show as well. Your explanation seems likely.)

Worse - because he’s an inveterate bullshitter. There is no fixed reality, no “facts.” He just says whatever seems to be most advantageous to him at that moment; what he may have said previously, even if it was the opposite, even if it was two sentences ago, is irrelevant.

(This is literally true - I heard him, during his campaign, advocate for a flat income tax and then two sentences later, without missing a beat, for a progressive tax. His supporters, instead of rejecting him for holding contradictory positions, instead embraced him because whatever their position, he agreed with them. That he also disagreed with them got ignored.)

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We had a very smart quaker parrot for years with a huge vocabulary. One of his phrases in a voice perfectly mimicking the sound of mine was, “You little fucker!”.

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That’s the key – opinion pieces. While we can question the journalistic integrity of publishing dueling blog posts editorials, they aren’t fact-based reporting.

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However, this is a perfect example of someone lying in order to keep their job so that they can continue to do necessary work that we need them to be there to do.

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I’m saying that somehow the collective power of employees of a book publisher can change things … then maybe the hundreds of thousands of civil servants can step up their game, too.

I’m sure that organizing a grassroots protest among the entirety of the US civil service is top priority for the guy running the federal government’s response to the Coronavirus right now. Yup, I’m sure he’ll drop everything to do that.

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There is no doing or not doing, only bragging.

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That makes perfect sense, or it would, except the thesis debated by the two pieces isn’t “Biden would be a good president” or “bananas are delicious”, or any other opinion. It’s a matter of fact. Facts should be reported factually, in fact-based reporting. Because they’re facts.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

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