Agent Orange’s Priority Is Making Sure Someone Else Takes the Blame If Things Go Bad
Jack Holmes
EsquireMarch 27, 2020
Photo credit: The Washington Post - Getty Images
That arrangement will not work for the president, however. If he grants this is his responsibility, he might be held accountable for the outcome. And while that is the definition of democratic self-government, it's not something in which he is particularly interested. So he called into Sean Hannity's Fox News program last night to explain why this is all really on the states themselves to figure out. That way, it's their fault when lots of people die.
Here's the president of the United States saying states "shouldn't be relying on the federal government." For help. During a national pandemic.
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— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence)
March 27, 2020
leaving it to the states, but it is not. It's more like if FDR said Pearl Harbor was Hawaii's problem. We are at war,
the president says constantly, against a
silent enemy, but apparently he is not the commander-in-chief, at least if it means he is responsible for whether we win or lose. He would like to be on television
talking about the war, and if it goes well he will claim credit. But if it goes south, it's Jay Inslee's fault.
feeling about how many ventilators we need." data-reactid="30" style="margin-bottom: 1em;">This was the theme of his Hannity appearance, however. Ol' Sean would sit there rustling papers while the President of the United States talked out of his royal behind about how many ventilators we need based on...his
feeling about how many ventilators we need.
"I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators"
- President Donald Trump
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— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence)
March 27, 2020
miraculously [/a]and take zero action to grow our testing capabilities, much less stockpile masks or ventilators, or task the Army Corps of Engineers with building out our hospital capacity. Even now,
The New York Timesreports the White House balked at the price tag for securing the number of ventilators we may need if we continue on our disastrous trajectory. Already, we're the epicenter of the worldwide pandemic—more cases than China. But we can't spend $1 billion on ventilators when, also according to the
Times, the $2 trillion stimulus bill making its way through Congress contains a $170 billion tax-break "bonanza" for rich real-estate investors. What did the president do before he was a game-show host, again?
Even in a country as unequivocally ****ed up as this one, you've got to think that the president will not be able to slime his way out of responsibility when large numbers of people start dying in the coming weeks. And they will. And some of those deaths will have been preventable. And the responsibility for preventing them lies with the federal government, led by the president.
