APRIL 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Last prominently seen confessing to Donald Trump’s quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine on national television, with the now infamous "get over it," has done it again. This time he made his confession overseas in a U.K. visit, so maybe he thought nobody would notice. It didn't work. The Washington Post obtained a recording of Mulvaney at the Oxford Union, saying:

"My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House," he said. "The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we're a lot less interested as a party."

Until it comes time to wield the deficit as a weapon to cut the safety net, of course.

He left that part out but made another admission about why Republicans refuse to do anything about climate change, which he implicitly acknowledged as a real thing. "We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing." That answer got laughs in the student audience, The Post reports. One can only assume those laughs were derisive.

They never have a problem with asking poor people, senior citizens, communities of color or anyone who doesn't vote Republican to change their lifestyle dramatically by not having enough to eat, or a roof, or health care but they are absolutely not going to afflict the comfortable. Again, that's not news to anyone who has paid attention to the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan, but the self-awareness from even a not-big-thinker like Mulvaney is a little surprising. Not that it will make any difference in the long run.

You know that in a second Trump term the deficit is going be used to cut Social Security and Medicare and deepen the cuts to Medicaid. It will be used to continue decimating food and housing assistance and every other program that helps everyone who doesn't count—a time-honored GOP formula.

2. Senator Mitch McConnell. “Moscow” Mitch goes on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, as he often does when he wants to be especially awful. He was exceptionally awful in all the most predictable ways: blaming the coronavirus crisis on impeachment—because of course he did—and rewriting all of the last three months of history while doing it.

The slow response by President Donald Trump and Congress to the COVID-19 crisis, McConnell said, was because the impeachment "diverted the attention of the government." Except that's total bunk. The Senate was still functioning while the impeachment trial was going forward during the last week in January, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was confirming the initial cases in the U.S. The business of the Senate included a Jan. 24 all-senators briefing on coronavirus with Trump health officials, including the CDC director and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. You remember that meeting, right? That's the one that happened just before three Senate Republicans dumped millions’ worth of stocks, collectively. That's the action they decided to take when confronted with the calamity that had hit our shores.

In fact, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who had received additional briefings, blew off the warnings. "The coronavirus doesn’t appear to pose any imminent threat to Americans who have not recently traveled to the Hubei province of China," he said. "For now, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control have the resources needed to prevent any significant contagion from spreading into the United States. If more resources are needed, Congress stands at the ready." He came to that conclusion on Feb. 4, the day before the Senate voted against the impeachment charges against Trump.

Continuing on with the rewriting of history in the Hewitt interview, McConnell gave credit to Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton for being "first" to warn of the dangers of coronavirus. "He was first. I think Tom was right on the mark."

Right on the mark meaning spouting bigoted, dangerous and blatantly false conspiracy theories about how the virus might have been (wink, wink) a chemical weapon developed in "China's only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases." Sure Mitch, you go ahead with the idea of Cotton being the big epidemiological brain in the Senate GOP.

Because it's Mitch, there's more: "I'm not going to allow this to be an opportunity for the Democrats to achieve unrelated policy items they wouldn't otherwise be able to pass," he sniffed, dismissing the necessity for further action by Congress to save the whole damned country. No, he's got his eyes on his true prize.

When the Senate gets back, it will "go back to judges. […] My motto for the rest of the year is to leave no vacancy behind."

3. Blunderkind Jared Kushner. Kushner made a rare public appearance at his daddy-in-law’s daily “press briefing” on the coronavirus, and demonstrated yet again why he’s so rarely let out in public—and why he shouldn’t be in charge of anything more critical that the White House’s office supplies.

Defending his decision (because apparently, he’s now making decisions) to not provide New York with all the ventilators it needs, Kushner claimed that the national stockpile is “ours” and not the states’. “The notion of the federal stockpile is supposed to be our stockpile,” he said, “not supposed to be state stockpiles.” Get that? They’re Trump’s stockpiles now, and until he can figure out how to make a buck off them, states had better get their grubby hands away.

The same goes for those masks all the doctors and nurses seem to think they’re entitled to. Kushner went on to claim in all his newfound expertise about the public health system.

“The N95 masks is an item that was not used as frequently in the medical profession before this,” he declared. “It was used mostly for diseases.” Um, Jared? Do you know what that word “disease” means?

And just now, the White House has changed the Strategic National Stockpile website to echo Kushner’s claim that it’s not primarily for the states’ use.

He then said that “we are encouraging the state to make sure they're assessing the needs, getting the data from their local situations and trying to fill it with supplies we have given them.” Which is exactly not what he did with New York in the first place.

When New York was pleading for ventilators, assessing their need and trying to get ahead of the coming disaster by having an adequate supply, Kushner nixed the request because he knew better. He reportedly told Trump "I have all this data about ICU capacity. I'm doing my own projections, and I've gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn't need all the ventilators."

For the record, the Strategic National Stockpile is intended to provide “life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.” That’s what their website says. “When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.”

There’s blood on Kushner’s hands, as much blood as on Trump’s.

4. Donald Trump, Jr. True to his contradictory self, President Trump has both dissed (“they didn’t decide to make it public”) and praised China’s President XI for his response to the Covid-19 crisis. His son, however, has minced few words in criticizing China’s leadership. On March 26, he tweeted:

“Anyone praising China’s ‘leadership’ in responding to the virus should be scorned for being the authoritarian/communist propagandist that they are.”

Apparently, his daddy didn’t get the word for later that same night he spoke with XI and had nothing but praise for their “very good” conversation.

“Just finished a very good conversation with President XI of China,” he wrote on Twitter. “Discussed in great detail the CoronaVirus that is ravaging large parts of the Planet. China has been through much and has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. WE are working closely together. Much respect.”

Will the Trumpster stay true to follow his usual pattern and bring the ax down on such disloyalty? After all, he has fired people for less. Don’t hold your breath. More likely he will deny he said what he tweeted about XI.

5. Television Quack Dr. Mehmet Oz. He’s been busted for pushing dietary supplements he was making profits off of as medical “miracles.” They weren’t. He was using his perceived medical expertise to generate profits for himself at the expense of everyone else. Dr. Oz has taken this show on the road to Fox News and the right-wing sulfursphere. Donald Trump has used him to televise a dubious medical health review of the president’s fast-food laden body. He has added whatever passes for credence by pretending he could perform some kind of Twitter-collected scientific study of anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine has any benefits if taken by people who come into contact with COVID-19.

Sounding like a true sociopath, Dr. Oz explained how getting our kids back into school so that parents can get back to work might be exactly what this quack doctor thinks needs to be ordered. Hannity gave a nice overwrought throw to Oz, asking the discredited TV doctor to “help us.”

DR. OZ: “Let’s start with things that are really critical to the nation where we think we might be able to open without getting into a lot of trouble. I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3% in terms of total mortality. You know, any life is a life lost, but to get every child back into school where they’re being safely educated, and fed, and making the most out of their lives—with the theoretical risk on the backside—that might be a tradeoff some folks would consider.”

It’s hard to know what Dr. Oz is even talking about. He might be referring to this study that reports that, without any other interventions, just closing schools alone would prevent “2-4% of deaths, much less than other social distancing interventions.” The conclusion of that study is that we need even more social distancing practices, not less.

But, Dr. Oz said his bright idea would only result in 2% to 3% mortality. Let’s take him at his misinformed word and the logic of his own statement. As CNN anchor Jack Tapper pointed out, Dr. Oz’s grasp of numbers is seemingly as bad as his grasp of medicine.  “A mortality rate of 2-3% of 328,200,000 Americans is 6,564,000 to 9,846,000 deal Americans. Yup. And when only 5 million Americans die, Trump and his pals can say they did a great job?

But maybe the comic book Halloween mad scientist doctor means just schoolchildren? According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “about 56.6 million students will attend elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States.” Doing some quick math—carry the one—that would mean Dr. Oz, Trump, and fiends feel that between 1,132,000 and 1,698,000 dead school age kids is “a very appetizing opportunity.”

6. President Trump. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes you need creative solutions. From the podium today, Donald J. Trump, who somehow became President of the United States, made a bold proposal: could you mainline disinfectant by injecting it into the human system. Not a joke.

The audience surrounding looks dumbfounded, as the sheer idea of injecting disinfectant — in this case, Isopropyl Alcohol — into the human body, seems too familiar to many who’ve heard Trump go wildly off script before.

Trump caused many Americans to rush to the drug stores to pick up hydroxychloroquine, but I’m uncertain if those same MAGA followers are now going to start drinking down Pine Sol or eating Tide Pods.
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And the May winner is …..

This month’s IGGY decision is easy. Without question: Dr. Oz.