Day: 4/19/2020

Even Trump’s ‘Friends’ Think His Behavior at Coronavirus Briefings is Asinine

Posted by on April 19, 2020 at 12:48 pm. 5 Comments :

For several weeks Donald Trump has been serving as the host of a daily reality TV program known as “The Coronavirus Task Force Briefings.” Trump envisions himself as the COVID-19 pandemic’s Pat Sajak, spinning a Wheel of Falsehoods and propaganda. He has turned what was intended to be a platform for disseminating life and death information into a petty, partisan, political charade.

Donald Trump

No longer able to bask in the glassy-eyed adoration of his cult disciples at mass rallies, Trump is callously exploiting a public health crisis in order to advance his own reelection prospects. He has cast himself as the star of the daily briefings despite the fact that, due to his ignorance and ego, he has nothing of value to contribute. Consequently, he wastes the time of the public and the press by upstaging the experts so that he can disgorge more lies, brag about imaginary accomplishments, and yell at reporters.

Trump’s narcissism always gets the best of him. He can’t hold a thought in his orange-glazed noggin that isn’t laser focused on his own self interest. But his efforts to exalt himself are failing bigly. His approval ratings are sinking during a national disaster, a time when any other leader would be enjoying a “rally round the flag” bounce. And he’s reduced to having to boast about his TV ratings because the American people aren’t buying his lies.

Even worse, many of Trump’s closest allies are straying from the Trump dogma. Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled “Trump’s Wasted Briefings“ that said “If Mr. Trump thinks these daily sessions will help him defeat Joe Biden, he’s wrong.” GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia is warning that the president should “let the health professionals guide where we’re going to go,” and that the briefings have gone “off the rails a little bit.” Trump’s chief Senate bootlicker, Lindsey Graham, said that Trump “drowns out his own message,” and suggested that he appear once a week rather than every day. Even a reliable Fox News Trump-fluffer, Brit Hume, responded harshly to a Trump tweet about the briefings, saying that…

To top it off, one of Trump’s closest friends, Piers Morgan, appeared on CNN Sunday morning and delivered an uncompromising smack down (video below). He prefaced it saying that Trump “won’t want me saying this, but I’m gonna say it anyway.” And his elaboration pretty much confirmed that:

“I’ve been watching these daily briefings with mounting horror frankly, because this is not what the president should be doing. […and what…] this requires of any world leader is that they’ve got to be calm. They have to show authority. They have to be honest. They have to be accurate, entirely factual with what they’re telling the people. And they have to have the ability to show empathy. And on almost every level of that Donald Trump, at the moment, is failing the American people.

“He’s turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him. Almost like what’s more important to him is winning the election in November. No it’s not, Donald Trump. What is more important right now is saving American lives.”

To be sure, Morgan is notorious right-wing jerk with a long history of racism and misogyny. His prior remarks about Trump have been effusively laudatory. Which makes this criticism all the more painful for Trump. We can expect some infantile and insulting tweets aimed at Morgan shortly, because Trump’s most predictable trait is lashing out at those whom he feels have betrayed him. And that’s pretty much everyone, since his paranoia and persecution was affirmed in his own words when he said that “All I see is hatred of me.” Poor baby.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.