Regime of Untruth

The past couple of days have made one thing abundantly clear: the Trump administration's fundamental dishonesty has cost us lives, maybe many lives.

CNN captured the problem perfectly yesterday. If we can't agree on fundamental assumptions, we're just not going to be effective.

Besides the disconnect between Trump and Fauci, we had conflicting messages between Trump and CDC director Robert Redfield. The Washington Post quoted Redfield as expressing concern that a fall combination of the coronavirus and the normal flu season was going to be "more difficult" than this spring's situation. In the afternoon circus Trump claimed Redfield had been misquoted.

As NBC reported it:

But earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted that Redfield was "totally misquoted by Fake News @CNN" and "He will be putting out a statement."

Trump revisited the topic at the start of Wednesday's briefing, saying Redfield "was totally misquoted in the media on a statement about the fall season and the virus."

"Totally misquoted. I spoke to him. He said it was ridiculous," Trump continued. "He was talking about the flu and corona coming together at the same time. And corona could be just some little flare-ups that we'll take care of. We're going to knock it out, we'll knock it out fast, but that's what he was referring to, coming together at the same time."

Watch Redfield parse his language so as to reaffirm what he'd already said while trying to pacify Trump.

I didn't say that this was going to be worse. I said it was going to be more difficult.

I'm just summarizing the NBC report here. ABC's Jonathan Karl peeled Redfield away from Trump like a cheetah separates a gazelle from the herd. Reading from the Post story, Karl asked, "Is that what you said to The Washington Post?"

Redfield....

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say to you just a minute ago....

On redirect from Karl, Redfield one more time...

I'm accurately quoted in The Washington Post as 'difficult." 

This single moment played out bigly in other stories. Trump, with help from FoxNews, heavily promoted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for the virus. This week the most significant study yet found that the drug is an ineffective treatment, and the CDC modified its statement on the drug as a treatment option.

But here's the thing.... Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine redirected key government resources away from other priorities. We know this because of two news breaks.

1. Back in February Trump threatened to fire the CDC's chief of respiratory diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonier, because she publicly acknowledged that the CDC was preparing for a potential pandemic. 
2. Trump actually did reassign Dr. Rick Bright, head of coronavirus vaccine research, after Bright questioned hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness. I encourage you to read Bright's statement, where he specifically says he refused to direct resources to the unproven treatment, and that's why he was demoted. (A click will expand the image.)

The lies are about resources--about our capacity to fight this virus. That's why it's funny-not-funny-at-all that the new leader of the HHS pandemic daily response team "joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years." It just makes your head explode.

Let's remember the role of FoxNews in this. It was Fox that first got Trump all aroused about the miracle drug. It's Fox that never ackowledges when they're wrong. And it's Fox that thinks this is an appropriate commentary segment.