The White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings have become must-see TV. Perhaps you’re among the millions who tune in every day to watch. But that can only be for morbid diversion.
After all, for over a month now, these daily briefings have been must-see only for the reason a train wreck would be. Specifically, they feature
- President Trump bullying reporters to propagate self-aggrandizing lies, self-congratulatory plaudits, and self-delusional misinformation;
- political and medical advisers standing beside him like little more than praetorian guards; and
- every network following them with commentators bemoaning the lies and misinformation Trump just spent hours planting into public consciousness.
Nothing is more distressing in this respect than watching Trump wax heroic about distributing critical supplies of PPEs, testing kits, and ventilators. Because networks invariably follow his briefings with interviews featuring frontline medics and politicians pleading for those very items, making him look clueless and dangerous in equal measure.
For example, during Friday’s briefing, Trump boasted about having so many ventilators that he was fielding requests from other heads of state to borrow some. Yet, on Saturday, CBS This Morning interviewed doctors bemoaning ventilator shortages so dire, they are rigging them to assist two patients at the same time. And just last night, 60 Minutes featured doctors and nurses complaining about having to use garbage bags as PPEs, noting that they count themselves lucky if they have a more protective Yankees rain poncho to fit for this purpose.
Alas, Trump has done a masterful job of making our reality a surreal version of his reality-TV mind. Therefore, it might be difficult to fully appreciate the absurdity on display every day.
But imagine NASA holding a press conference to brief the public on discovering the first signs of life in the universe. The whole world would tune in, naturally. Then imagine William “Captain Kirk” Shatner commandeering it to ramble on about all the exciting discoveries Starship Enterprise made on its voyages. And then imagine half of those watching not only enjoying this spectacle, but thinking nothing odd about Shatner treating the NASA astronauts like mere extras on the set of his TV show, The Apprent… er, Star Trek.
Then, of course, there’s the groundhog-day nature of this farce. Except that, no matter how many wrecks you’ve seen, even you would probably rubberneck to see another one, no?
Anyway, the above, in effect, is what these White House COVID-19 briefings now amount to. But nothing betrays what little public service they are providing quite like the indictment the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal published on April 8:
Trump’s wasted briefings … have become a boring show of President vs. the press. … Perhaps they substitute in his mind for the campaign rallies he can no longer hold because of the risks. …
Whatever the reason, the briefings are now all about the President.
That, folks, is the political equivalent of God rebuking America’s most popular televangelist, Joel Osteen. But you’d be surprised at the number of people who will buy into Trump’s spin about the editorial board of the WSJ merely reflecting elitist prejudice against him (and them).
That’s why a similar indictment Brit Hume handed down is so damning. Hume, after all, is to Fox News what, well, what Shatner is to Star Trek. Yet here is how Captain Hume rebuked Trump for trying to brush off the WSJ with his fake-news tag:
This is a ridiculous tweet. He could get his views across without bragging, endlessly repeating himself, and getting into petty squabbles with the junior varsity players in the WH press corps. And he could stop talking much sooner to give Pence, Fauci, Birx and Giroir more time
— Brit Hume (@brithume) April 9, 2020
To be fair, though, Trump’s supporters have come to expect a wreck every time he opens his big mouth. They insist that’s what they love about him. And they ain’t lyin’.
In fact, here in part is how I warned it would be thus in “Humping Trump Exposes News Anchormen as Worse than Used Car Salesmen,” May 2, 2016.
__________
I blame voters, not TV, for Trump.
He makes quite a show of attributing his popularity among Republican voters to his willingness to act like a boastful, bumptious, bullying buffoon. Never mind that he appears congenitally unable to ‘act presidential.’
But ratings indicate that even Americans who hate Trump can’t resist watching his reality TV show masquerading as a presidential campaign; hence the TV phenomenon. …
Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that Trump, the undisputed P.T. Barnum of our times, is having no trouble getting them to buy his snake oil to ‘Make America Great Again.’ This, notwithstanding a litany of caveat emptors, including his absurd fulminations about getting Mexico to pay for a wall to keep Mexicans out and banning all Muslims to keep terrorists out.
They are like people who gorge themselves for years on nothing but fast food, and then wonder — with anger, frustration, and self-righteous indignation — why they ended up morbidly obese. To continue poking them, however, would be tantamount to harpooning beached whales.
Not to mention the alarming number of people who, it seems, just want to be entertained — even in politics; and, the more gauche and scandalous the better. This explains the popularity of reality TV, the tabloidization of the news, and the rise of Trump — the impact on cultural development, or even the welfare of the country, be damned.
__________
Still, even his most gullible supporters must cringe at the way Trump has been muzzling his own medical experts at these briefings lately. After all, he has been doing so to doggedly peddle the unapproved drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients, invariably compounding his spectacle by mangling the drug’s name.
As President Donald Trump flips through the cable news channels, one doctor in particular has caught his eye: Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity cardiac surgeon whose medical advice has been called into serious question in the past.
Trump has been intrigued by Oz’s appearances on Fox News in which he has talked up the potential effectiveness of the anti-Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a way to treat the novel coronavirus, a White House official told CNN.
(CNN, April 7, 2020)
Of course, nothing is more dangerous than a doctor thinking expertise in one area of medicine gives him expertise in every other. Unfortunately, that seems to be Dr. Oz’s mentality in a nutshell.
He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon. He is not an epidemiologist. He is not a virologist. And, unlike Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of Trump’s own coronavirus task force, Oz is not an immunologist.
But Oz has become a wizard at marketing all manner of snake oil on TV. Indeed, it’s easy to see how he would give gullible viewers the impression that he knows more about treating COVID-19 than Fauci could ever imagine.
Unsurprisingly, his sales pitch was all Trump and other Fox News flat-earthers needed to feel fortified against the truth and consequences of using this drug to treat this virus. Except that, for Trump, Oz was also providing medical cover for him to pursue the one thing that motivates him above all else: money.
President Donald Trump has a ‘small financial interest’ in the maker of an anti-malarial drug that he has been touting as a ‘game changer’ in treating coronavirus, according to The New York Times. Over the past two weeks, Trump and his Fox News allies have aggressively promoted hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure, despite top infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and others urging caution and noting that there was not enough evidence of the drug’s efficacy.
(The Daily Beast, April 7, 2020)
“Small financial interest” might seem to undermine money as a motive. Except that this is the same Trump who has a notorious record of stiffing carpenters, masons, and other laborers when their relatively small bills come due. All the same, lest you think he’s interested in saving lives, the following gives a good sense of where Trump’s his interests lie:
[T]he bad news: a deadly pandemic is apparently gaining steam and killing more Americans.
The good news? The “‘ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY,”’ Trump tweeted.
(Deadline, March 29, 2020)
Frankly, Trump has shown time and again that he sees the presidency as little more than a political gig to enrich himself. Therefore, I’ll spare you my own groundhog-day briefings in this respect. Instead, the titles to a few of my commentaries alone speak volumes:
- “Trump for President? ! Don’t Be a Sucker,” April 8, 2011
- “Trump, Jared, and Ivanka Forgoing Salaries Is Just Another Bait and Switch,” April 3, 2017
- “Trump Forgoes Salary Only to Enrich Himself in Other Ways a Thousandfold,” February 26, 2020
What many of you might find remarkable, though, is that Dr. Oz has more in common with social-media product peddlers like the Kardashians than a serious medical practitioner like Dr. Fauci. As it happens, I could go on groundhog-day briefings in this respect too. But here too I’ll spare you. Instead, like before, titles to just two should do:
- “Dr. Oz in Fat Suit?! Why Not in Blackface, Doctor?” February 5, 2014
- “Dr. Oz: More Wizard than Physician,” April 24, 2015
In any event, nothing warns of the danger inherent in what Trump and Oz are doing quite like the abrupt and unprecedented move the CDC made last week.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed from its website guidelines for doctors on how to prescribe two antimalarial drugs that President Donald Trump has touted as potential treatments for the novel coronavirus.
Trump has been pressing federal health officials to make the drugs — hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine — more widely available, despite little reliable evidence that they are effective at treating the virus.
(CNN, April 8, 2020)
So first the WSJ, then Capt. Hume, now the CDC; all we need now is Murdoch himself to rebuke Trump.
To reopen, or not to reopen…
I feel obliged to chime in on the Hamletian decision Trump is playing out in his own head on the world stage.
President Trump on Friday described the decision on when and how to reopen the country as the most difficult one he’s had to make in his life, underscoring the careful line he is walking between concerns about the economy and public health during the coronavirus outbreak.
(The Hill, April 10, 2020)
Of all of the misleading statements he made (on Good Friday no less), this one was most brazenly narcissistic. Because everyone knows that, one by one, state governors decided to lockdown the country (i.e., shutdown all non-essential businesses and issue stay-at-home orders), and they’re the ones who will decide when to reopen it.
So, to reopen, or not to reopen, that is not the decision – for Trump. To be fair, it seems every news organization, except Fox News, has been trying lately to disabuse the public of this Trumpian big lie. In any event, no matter Trump’s dramatic, delusional musings about his big decision, my state of Virginia will remain in lockdown at least until June 10 – as Governor Northam, not President Trump, decreed.
Unfortunately, political tribalism in America is such these days that (most) governors of Republican (red) states will pretend to play along with Trump’s national order, whereas every governor of every Democratic (blue) state will simply ignore him.
The problem is that travel between red and blue states is as irrepressible as it is commonplace. Therefore, reopening only red states would be tantamount to cutting off nose to spite face. Granted, these are the same red-state governors who proudly rejected healthcare coverage for their dirt-poor citizens merely because a Democratic president conceived it. Oh, that he also happened to be black only fueled tribal, self-abnegating rejection among red-state citizens.
Related commentaries:
Humping Trump…
Trump enrich…
Dr. Oz…
political tribalism…
Murdoch…
coronavirus…