Honor the Fake

So much ridiculousness, right? All of it menacing in sort of a vague way. But lots of reason to mock Donald Trump.

The trick is: All these outrages are really just distractions. Trump knows Americans are angry because he delayed for about two months in taking serious action on the coronavirus. We have no idea how many Americans will die as a result. It's all a fake.

So while we have to call out every outrage, it's more important that we hold our attention on the big picture. It's a tough spot. That runner may be jumping around, faking a break for second base. We're like the pitcher with a fast runner on first base: you have to hold that runner accountable, but the main threat is holding a bat about 60 feet in front of you.

New York Times

First, he's gonna put his signature on the stimulus checks issued to ordinary Americans. This is problematic at several levels.

• There's a reason presidents don't sign checks. It's not their money to dish out. It's our money. By putting his name on the check, Trump pretends that he's giving us something that actually belongs to ordinary Americans in the first place.
• Trump wants people to think he's Santa Claus. Whatever.
• Some sources are reporting that this change will delay the release of the checks, while the Trump Administration says it won't. Practically speaking, there's no way this isn't going to (a) cost some additional money because Treasury took time in figuring out how to do it and (b) intuitively, that process necessarily takes a little time--whether days, we don't know. Trump's signature will actually go on the memo line, as he's not authorized to distribute funds directly.
• But the main threat? Day after day, and there's more today, Trump takes steps that put him in the place of a petty dictator. We can't have that.

Second, Trump clownishly pretended he was "authorizing" governors to manage their own states. 

I will be authorizing each individual governor, of each individual state, to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state in a time and a manner as most appropriate. Because certain states are in much different condition and in a much different place than other states.

I might as well authorize my dog to take a poop. Again, it's ridiculous--gotta be called out--but there's that sinister dimension. Trump wants that authority so very badly. He wants to control when all of us poop.

Third, Trump is holding up funding to the World Health Organization in an attempt to blame the WHO for the severity of the pandemic. This is a transparent attempt to shift blame from himself, following his recent attacks on China. Was the WHO perfect? Nope. Nor was China. But Trump spent two weeks denying the seriousness of the threat. Again, we face multiple levels of evil.

• Chances are, Trump would want to defund the WHO on any given Tuesday. He's always against any kind of international collaboration, especially when it's multilateral.
• The WHO remains our best resource for collaborating with other countries when the next pandemic threatens us.
• But look at the problem structurally. The WHO isn't perfect, but on the whole it's been very helpful in helping nations understand the nature of the threat we face. How many Americans have died because Trump turned down the coronavirus tests produced by the WHO? 

This is the big pattern. Where Trump poops on the carpet, he doesn't clean up the mess. He just burns a really strong candle. In his remarks on the WHO yesterday, Trump mentioned China over 20 times. But Trump's record on China is embarrassing, and he doesn't want you to see the actual course of his behavior. Observe the dates.

Again, it's all about rewriting history. Trump pretends he's hard on China when he hasn't been. The WHO issue is just one way for him to play tough guy.

You gotta honor the fake. Trump's campaign has released an ad that tries to pin Joe Biden as being "soft on China": "Biden protected China's feelings while China cripples America." The ad even escalates Trumpist racism by including footage of Biden onstage with an apparently Chinese person--who happens to be an American, former Washington governor Gary Locke.

New York Times

Here's guessing the Trump people knew folks would call out the racism in the ad for a couple of reasons. The outrage makes a victim out of Trump in the eyes of his supporters, while it also distracts people from Trump's own pandering to Xi.

Remember, there's a batter at the plate, and they're holding a club. While all this foolishness is going on, Trump is diverting emergency resources to red states and holding them back from blue states. Again, people will die--and have died--because Trump is playing politics above valuing the lives of every American equally.