The Buck Gets Passed Along

If character matters in a president, we are truly paddleless on the upstream side of the creek. Donald Trump's press conference yesterday gave this away on multiple occasions.

First Trump blamed hospitals and medical professionals for supply shortages. Stung by the criticism that he failed to ramp up production of critical items like ventilators, Trump accused hospitals of hoarding them.

“We have some healthcare workers, some hospitals ... hoarding equipment including ventilators,” Trump said at the White House following a meeting with corporate executives, including from U.S. Medical Group.

“We have to release those ventilators — especially hospitals that are never going to use them.”

Exactly which hospitals, I wonder, feel like they have enough ventilators for what's coming?

Trump addressed the mask shortage too, apparently ignorant of how many masks a hospital might go through in a short time.

"How do you go from 10 to 20 to 30,000, to 300,000 -- even though this is different. Something is going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going?"

What about states that are begging for supplies? Yup, Trump went after them too.

“Many of the states are stocked up. Some of them don’t admit it.”

But the one thing Trump can't abide? His own words. Ask him to clarify things he's actually said, and Trump will really show his ass. Ask the wrong question, and they'll cut off your mic--or just take it out of your hand. I can't vouch for how Breitbart may have edited the first video.

 It's all deadly. Wasn't that long ago Trump said we had 15 cases and would soon be at zero. Then he said we'd all be in church together on Easter Sunday. I'll give him credit for responding to his experts. They told him that even on our current course, we're looking at a death toll between 100,000 and 200,000, so he acknowledged we may have to practice social distancing through April.

Then what did the jackass do? Having told us we were experiencing a hoax, and having predicted we'd be at zero cases a month ago, yesterday Trump said.... Well, just read it.

"So if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job."

Trump doesn't just move the goalposts. He moves them in midsentence.