Corona Diaries 10—How Do You Sign ‘Don’t Drink Bleach’?

4/27

It’s Monday and I bid you welcome to the mouth of madness. I didn’t say that last Friday. Or I did. I’m not taking any questions. I didn’t say what I said. I didn’t say what I said I said. I certainly didn’t say what YOU said I said. The media misreported what I said and what I said I said. The whistle blowers said what I said I didn’t say. Next question. Don’t listen to the security analysts, doctors and scientists. You didn’t hear what you heard them say. You’re all wrong. Ah c’mon, I wasn’t being serious. Or …

The trouble is that when you’re the POTUS, everything you say is serious. It is backed by the full faith and credit of these United States. Leaders of 195 countries take you seriously every time you speak. The default for three hundred thirty million Americans desperate for absent leadership in a time of crisis is take you seriously whether you appear to be serious or not. Wall Street goes apeshit when you talk. The news media hang on your every word. They shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. All these things that were true before you were elected aren’t anymore and perhaps that has you upset.

Let’s be honest for once; you were serious here, you ridiculous clown. The doctor isn’t smiling. I think she seriously wants to choke you with her Hermes scarf. There was no prior testy exchange with reporters. No whiny irritating burr, that tell in your voice that you’re vexed and weren’t to be take seriously. Everybody knows your serious voice and your sarcastic voice. How pathetic that you’d lie about it. How pathetic that you’d stomp off the stage on Saturday without answering for yourself. You call the coronavirus briefings a waste of time. You’ve made them so. All the other speakers, even Pence, have something important to say. You and you alone are the waste of time.

Removing yourself from the podium is perhaps the single most important gift you’ve offered the American people. It’s a pity you can’t stay away from the spotlight. Let’s take comfort that this will be the moment, though there are many others, that you can’t take back. The moment that will lose you the election in November.

You are desperate. Everybody sees it. You grasping at straws to get your precious steroid-injected economy back running on all cylinders as soon as possible. No matter who it kills. It’s not like you can hop on a tanning bed and get coronavirus “internal light treatments” that cause your bright healthy orange glow and the pale raccoon-eyed goggle rings. Orangeman, there are only two body orifices in which to introduce any devices. You know where you should put your powerful light treatment.

And though Trump can get on the podium and say whatever the hell comes to mind, his reasoned, data-driven scientists don’t get that luxury. Under Trump, coronavirus experts can speak — as long as they mostly toe the line. He humiliated CDC head Dr. Robert Redfield, and attempted to make him walk back his alert on the double whammy that influenza + corona will likely cause this fall. Watch the visibly uncomfortable Redfield make a conciliatory opening statement, apologize for telling the truth, then using a few extra words, says exactly what the Washington Post quoted him as saying. The indiscriminate viewer, (most of Trump’s base) will not parse Redfield’s careful language. They’ll instead revel in the look and feel of Trump making a senior “deep state” scientist knuckle under.

This is one example of many of how power warps language to distorts truth. Total 1984.