Friday, September 11, 2020

White House Update: Widespread Non-Panic


In (a tape-recorded) interview with (author Bob) Woodward on March 19, the president conceded that he was downplaying the threat of the virus in public. 

 "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic," Trump told Woodward.

"Do you think there is systematic or institutional racism in this country?" Woodward is heard on tape asking the president.
  
"Well, I think there is everywhere," Mr. Trump responded, "I think probably less here than most places, or less here than many places."
  
"Okay, but is it here, in a way that it has an impact on people's lives?" Woodward asked.
  
"I think it is and it's unfortunate," Mr. Trump said. "But I think it is."
  
Woodward then asked Mr. Trump if a privileged life left him out of touch. 
  
"...And do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me – and I think lots of White, privileged people – in a cave and that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country? Do you see?" Woodward asked. 
  
"No," the president said. "You, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you, wow. No, I don't feel that at all."

(Investigative journalist David) Sirota charged (as we long have) that Trump's actions constitute "a horrific crime against humanity," but he adds, "it was aided and abetted by the popular face of investigative journalism: Mr. All The President's Men himself."

"The President of the United States said something to the nation's most famous reporter, and the most famous reporter sat on that information for seven months while tens of thousands of people died," Sirota says today. "Donald Trump committed a crime against humanity and Bob Woodward drove the getaway car."



So why did Woodward sit on these lies of Trump's for seven months? Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute explains that Woodward has done this before.

Woodward’s long practice of mixing his association with The Washington Post while writing books has arisen as a point of friction before. In 2005, Woodward apologized to Post editors for withholding for two years information that a senior official with the George W. Bush administration told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

[...]

“There is no ethical or moral defense of Woodward’s decision to not publish these tapes as soon as they were made,” tweeted John Stanton, the former Washington bureau chief for BuzzFeed. “If there was any chance it could save a single life, he was obligated to do so. Bob Woodward put making money over his moral and professional duty. Even if you don’t believe in service journalism or that we have an ethical duty to speak truth to power and expose wrongdoing, even if all you care about is scoops, this is an abject failure. It’s just gross profiteering off death and misery on the part of Woodward.”


The only conclusion I keep reaching -- whether it is Big Pharma and the hospitals bankrupting people to death while paying Democrats to stand with Republicans in opposing Medicare for All ...


... to Nancy Pelosi, representing San Francisco, CA, cracking wise about the "new green whatever" as the skies over her city turn blood red from wildfires promulgated by climate change ...


...to the once-upon-a-time-noble journalist Woodward, who made his bones forcing a corrupt president out of office for a "third-rate burglary" and some money-laundering, now holding back a reveal that might have saved peoples' lives so he could sell another book just before an election -- democracy in this country has been irreparably shattered by capitalism.

-- It's crine ass shame that all this still isn't enough to get me to vote for Joe Biden. I'm sick of this performative bullshit.


-- So the Donks want to bray some more about Russia, Russia, Russia.


-- They're also spending more time, money, and effort trying to kick Howie Hawkins off the ballot than they are trying to help their feeble candidate get elected.


(Shortly after this Tweet by Sarandon, the Biden camp updated the page.)


-- I'm also undecided; I cannot choose between Howie and Mark Charles.


Not certain I could vote for Amy McGrath if I lived in Kentucky. I already can't vote for MJ Hegar, and they're basically the same thing. It's Charles' thought that counts here, and not mine.

Will have a week-ending Lone Star Roundup before the Funnies on Sunday.
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