All of a sudden, I am getting daily emails from Donald Trump. Clearly someone has sold his campaign a list of emails addresses that include mine. My first instinct was to block them but then I thought I’d not, just to see what they think appeals to his supporters. For several days he would urge me to add my name to a ‘surprise’ birthday card for his wife Melania, something that was apparently done last year too and the goal this year seems to be to exceed the numbers who signed last year. Given that this is a repeat of last year, she must be someone who forgets things quickly or is easily surprised.
Yesterday was Sunday, Trump’s day of choice for going on a Twitter tear with his usual mix of ignorance and incoherence, this time urging that journalists give back their ‘Noble’ [sic] prizes.
When will all of the “reporters” who have received Noble Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes), be turning back their cherished “Nobles” so that they can be given….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2020
I think it must really sting for Trump that Barack Obama, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, and Abiy Ahmed Ali, prime minister of Ethiopia, are all heads of state who recently won Nobel peace prizes but that he, despite being a very stable genius, has been overlooked.
Maybe his name could be submitted in the Physiology and Medicine category of Nobel prizes for his brilliant suggestion that Covid-19 could be treated by injecting bleach and other disinfectants into the body. Poison control centers across the country have received so many calls asking about the possible benefits of doing this that they have had to issue statements telling people not to do it. What worries me are those who did not think to call any competent authority but simply believe Trump.
Meanwhile, here is Anthony Fauci (played by Brad Pitt) translating Trump’s words.
Meanwhile Deborah Birx is trying to minimize the absurdity of his words and blaming the media, even going on Fox News and saying “I think the media is very slicey and dicey about how they put sentences together in order to create headlines.”
Birx’s weekend media appearances were right in line with what Trump would like to see from his surrogates. But the doctor should be above this kind of pandering. She’s in a tough spot, but choosing to blame the media instead of deflecting these sorts of questions does no one any good. In fact, it feeds into the blame and don’t trust the media narrative that the president has evoked from day one.
The public’s need to trust the media during a pandemic is of utmost importance, and one of America’s top health officials sowing seeds of distrust is dangerous.
Birx is sliding more and more into Trump sycophancy territory.
“Poison control centers across the country have received so many calls asking about the possible benefits of doing this ”
The joke is a bit too tasteless even for me, but part of me wishes that those centers had given a positive answer. It would perhaps have costed Donald the Clown the next elections.
Why does he think reporters win Nobel prizes? Has he not heard of Pulitzers?
Speaking of mailing lists — last week I received my stimulus payment via direct deposit. Saturday I got a letter by snail mail. Over Trump’s signature it explained that I’d received my stimulus payment by direct deposit. You see, since it was an electronic transfer, I didn’t get a paper check with Trump’s name on it, so he apparently decided it was important that people like me saw his name anyway. Wonder how much that little bit of narcissism cost the government?
I wished there was something worse I could do with that letter than toss it in the trash while holding my nose.
DonDueed,
So that is how it was done! I wondered how he was going to get his name on an electronic transfer.
I read that he was not allowed by law to be the signatory of the physical checks but that they found a way to add his signature to the signature of the person actually required by law to sign it. I haven’t seen those checks so don’t know what it looks like.
Look at the ironic upside: Chump’s mailing provided revenue to the very Postal Service he’s trying to destroy.