Trump not cooperating with Biden on Covid-19

Chew Toy McCoy

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I think this is kind of a funny headline I've been reading lately.

A). Trump isn't cooperating with Biden on anything. Why single this out?

B). What part of Trump not doing anything about Covid-19 does Biden need to be a part of? He can pretty much guarantee the day he's in office Trump's Covid-19 strategy to date will consist entirely of a blank whiteboard.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Kind of tied to this, but I like Edward Norton’s recent tweeted out theory based on his dad being a prosecutor. The real reason Trump is doing this is to create chaos and buy time to shred evidence and try to force some kind of deal for him to leave unscathed. “Do this for me and I’ll stop creating more damage you’ll have to undo.”
 

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Kind of tied to this, but I like Edward Norton’s recent tweeted out theory based on his dad being a prosecutor. The real reason Trump is doing this is to create chaos and buy time to shred evidence and try to force some kind of deal for him to leave unscathed. “Do this for me and I’ll stop creating more damage you’ll have to undo.”

Maybe, I'm just the sort of wimpy European that disapproves of the death penalty, deplores (a deliberate use of this verb) the sort of political culture that conflates "freedom" with swaggering about armed to the teeth, and dislikes things such as racism, sexism, corruption, cynicism, cruelty........but, I do wonder how one can expect to "leave (office) unscathed" (leaving aside the corruption, cruelty, mendacity, narcissism, a stratospheric lack of empathy) if one has presided over (another deliberate use of a verb) a quarter of a million (unnecessary) deaths from the Corona virus in a period of around eight months.
 

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I think this is kind of a funny headline I've been reading lately.

A). Trump isn't cooperating with Biden on anything. Why single this out?

B). What part of Trump not doing anything about Covid-19 does Biden need to be a part of? He can pretty much guarantee the day he's in office Trump's Covid-19 strategy to date will consist entirely of a blank whiteboard.

Because of the numbers infected and the numbers dying. (Millions, and hundreds of thousands, respectively).

These are stupefying numbers in a country that is supposed to be one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the world, a country that used to be, until relatively recently, the very definition of a successful First World country, economy and polity.

Because it is wrecking the economy.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Because of the numbers infected and the numbers dying. (Millions, and hundreds of thousands, respectively).

These are stupefying numbers in a country that is supposed to be one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the world, a country that used to be, until relatively recently, the very definition of a successful First World country, economy and polity.

Because it is wrecking the economy.
Right but cooperating assumes Trump is actually doing something, and he’s not. He’s been cashed out on pretty much the entire time other than trying to turn it into a daily TV Trump rally. Other than that he’s deligated all responsibility to the states. We probably know more about it than Trump does and I’m sure Biden has access to more info than the general public without Trump’s cooperation.
 

Alli

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B). What part of Trump not doing anything about Covid-19 does Biden need to be a part of? He can pretty much guarantee the day he's in office Trump's Covid-19 strategy to date will consist entirely of a blank whiteboard.
It’s not Trump. It’s the rest of the administration. You know, the people who actually are doing the work. Biden’s team needs to meet with those people so that any plans they’ve completed for vaccination distribution can be approved, improved, etc.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Maybe, I'm just the sort of wimpy European that disapproves of the death penalty, deplores (a deliberate use of this verb) the sort of political culture that conflates "freedom" with swaggering about armed to the teeth, and dislikes things such as racism, sexism, corruption, cynicism, cruelty........but, I do wonder how one can expect to "leave (office) unscathed" (leaving aside the corruption, cruelty, mendacity, narcissism, a stratospheric lack of empathy) if one has presided over (another deliberate use of a verb) a quarter of a million (unnecessary) deaths from the Corona virus in a period of around eight months.

Biden has said he has zero interest in using the federal government to go after Trump and just wants to move on. That’s probably the best move he can make if he doesn’t want his 4 years to be consumed by Trump in the public eye. However, New York and possibly other states can’t wait to go after Trump once he’s out of office. That’s entirely the state’s right and separate from the federal government. Perhaps Trump thinks he can cut a deal where the states can’t go after him either.

I don't think his response (or lack thereof) is ever going to be something that enters the court system. Most likely it will be over his business and financial actions before he was President.
 

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It’s not Trump. It’s the rest of the administration. You know, the people who actually are doing the work. Biden’s team needs to meet with those people so that any plans they’ve completed for vaccination distribution can be approved, improved, etc.
But again, that’s assuming there are others doing that type work. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if when Trump found out the vaccines wouldn’t be available in large quantities until after he leaves office he just told the staff to make that all Biden’s problem. Anything else the states can just deal with on their own. I seriously doubt there’s some highly organized secret plan being executed. Two words: Jerod Kushner.
 

lizkat

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Because of the numbers infected and the numbers dying. (Millions, and hundreds of thousands, respectively).

These are stupefying numbers in a country that is supposed to be one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the world, a country that used to be, until relatively recently, the very definition of a successful First World country, economy and polity.

Because it is wrecking the economy.

Figures for government or corporate revenue and spending are rattled off every day in billions or hundreds of millions. So when we learn that 250,000 people are dead now in the USA from coronavirus, how to get our heads around a number like that?

Living in such a rural area, even trying to envision the idea of 250,000 people gathered together feels almost preposterous... my county has about 33 residents per square mile in a 1400 square mile area.

So it struck me to add up the 2019 population estimates of all four mostly rural counties served by my local newspaper, and the figure came to not quite 182,000. The four counties cover a total area of not quite four thousand square miles, so an average population per square mile of around 45.

So if the coronavirus had somehow limited itself to such a localized piece of terrain, everyone in those four counties would be dead, plus another 70,000 people from several more adjoining and also rural counties.

To imagine such a sprawling landscape that would be completely devoid of human life seems just mind boggling, even for those of us used to living in very sparsely populated areas.

And yet that would not faze Donald Trump, apparently. He's not fazed by the idea of 250k dead nor apparently by any individual's death from the covid-19 virus yet, because he has not died from it, so whoever else has passed on from it was just... faking it? Or weak? Oh, and then he has a theory that a lot of the deaths were not "really" covid because the people had underlying illness so that's what killed them, not covid.

Every day Trump stalls and puts off cooperation w/ Biden and the transition team getting with the administration to deal better with covid is just another day Trump allows to pass with mixed messages and politicization of a public health crisis like we've never seen before: just ask country public health officials in state after state, where it has become common for county clerks paid less than $70k per year to deal with threats to their lives and that of their families just for trying to do their jobs of managing contact tracing and public health data reporting.
 

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Figures for government or corporate revenue and spending are rattled off every day in billions or hundreds of millions. So when we learn that 250,000 people are dead now in the USA from coronavirus, how to get our heads around a number like that?

Living in such a rural area, even trying to envision the idea of 250,000 people gathered together feels almost preposterous... my county has about 33 residents per square mile in a 1400 square mile area.

So it struck me to add up the 2019 population estimates of all four mostly rural counties served by my local newspaper, and the figure came to not quite 182,000. The four counties cover a total area of not quite four thousand square miles, so an average population per square mile of around 45.

So if the coronavirus had somehow limited itself to such a localized piece of terrain, everyone in those four counties would be dead, plus another 70,000 people from several more adjoining and also rural counties.

To imagine such a sprawling landscape that would be completely devoid of human life seems just mind boggling, even for those of us used to living in very sparsely populated areas.

And yet that would not faze Donald Trump, apparently. He's not fazed by the idea of 250k dead nor apparently by any individual's death from the covid-19 virus yet, because he has not died from it, so whoever else has passed on from it was just... faking it? Or weak? Oh, and then he has a theory that a lot of the deaths were not "really" covid because the people had underlying illness so that's what killed them, not covid.

Every day Trump stalls and puts off cooperation w/ Biden and the transition team getting with the administration to deal better with covid is just another day Trump allows to pass with mixed messages and politicization of a public health crisis like we've never seen before: just ask country public health officials in state after state, where it has become common for county clerks paid less than $70k per year to deal with threats to their lives and that of their families just for trying to do their jobs of managing contact tracing and public health data reporting.

I was talking to my brother earlier this evening, and - among other sobering subjects - we discussed the numbers of those killed by the Corona virus in the US.

(And yes, we discussed Mr Trump's breathtaking and profoundly disturbing lack of empathy - my brother reminded me of how Trump's niece had written of his complete lack of empathy and how unhinged and dangerous he is, and how she wrote that these days between the election and the next inauguration will be very dangerous - a quarter of a million dead, and he doesn't give a proverbial flying fuck unless it affects him, or inconveniences him, or harms him in some way......words fail me).

In the Other Place, Other Country, in some of the earlier lunatic threads, around the time the deaths numbered 70,000 (itself a mind-boggling number), I had done some historical addition, such as checking or looking up, supposed numbers of US dead from all of the 20th century wars, by way of comparing and contrasting these numbers, with the numbers of those who have died (in a far shorter period of time) from Covid-19. And, even then, more had - have - died from Covid-19 in a few months than in all of the wars the US had been engaged in, during the entire 20th century (and what we have experienced of the 21st century, so far). Shocking.

However, I did recall that the numbers killed during the Civil War were stratospheric (and for different reasons, political reasons, I have been looking at some of this stuff these past few days, plus the fact that it was a major interest of mine when I was a kid - something my father and I had bonded over, as Lincoln was a childhood hero of mine), and tonight, while chatting, we checked them, yes, approximately 600,000-700,000. Actually, some sources suggest 750,000 from war (military) related deaths,

But, that was in over four years of combat; in eight months, deaths from Covid are already in excess of a third of that in the US.

That the leadership of the Republican Party do not see this as shocking and shaming leaves me gobsmacked.

And that they have no shame about merrily and busily - and quite deliberately - undermining the democratic foundations of one of the world's oldest democracies - flawed, yes, but once upon an increasingly distant time, a place that served as an ideal, a model, an aspiration, the possibility of something better and fairer - for almost everyone else on the planet - appals me.

Actually, - this belongs in another thread - but we both think that he (Mr Trump) will try to do something completely deranged, spectacularly insane, utterly lunatic - such as drop a nuclear bomb on Iran a day or so before he leaves office, - if only to spite Mr Biden.

Should he attempt to do such a thing, I can only hope that there are individuals who will decline to carry out such orders.
 
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