Successful Policy

It was incompetence, it was malfeasance. https://t.co/eNBKQShgOy

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) November 15, 2021

It was not incompetence. It was not malfeasance. The Administration's policies worked as expected Last week we learned

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released to CNN on Friday new evidence showing how US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials were pressured by Trump administration officials to alter scientific guidance and prevented from communicating directly with the public.

In new excerpts of transcribed interviews, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the former director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said she was made aware that then-President Donald Trump was angered by a February 25, 2020, briefing during which she warned the public about the dangers of the coronavirus. Messonnier says in the transcript she had calls with former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and former US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar after the briefing, and that she was "upset" after her conversation with Azar.

In the transcripts, other CDC officials described how requests to hold briefings about mask guidance and pediatric Covid-19 cases and deaths were denied. When asked about a CNN report that CDC officials felt "muzzled," Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC's former principal deputy director, said, "That is the feeling that we had, many of us had."

This should not have been surprising.  In April of 2020 the federal government was

accused of intercepting shipments of vital medical equipment ordered by state authorities to shore up their supplies in the face of the coronavirus crisis.

In March, President Donald Trump had told states to seek their own supplies and minimize their requests from the national stockpile, which has resulted in local authorities scrambling to place large orders of ventilators, masks, and other personal protective equipment.

Trump has put the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of deciding which states are in most need of equipment from the national stockpile, replacing the Department of Health and Human Services, according to The New York Times.

Since then, there have been multiple reports of FEMA or the wider federal government diverting thousands of pieces of equipment from the states that ordered them, without explanation.

Recognizing a public health emergency was insufficient.   The President himself knew at least as of March 19, 2020 that the coronavirus attacked "not just old, older, young people, too, plenty of young people" but he "wanted to always play it down."  He did urge development of a vaccine because he knew it was his ticket to re-election, but it was approved a few weeks too late for him to salvage a victory. Until then, hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths would ensue, an outcome he favored and encouraged.

As a historian who has written about the Holocaust, I'll say bluntly: This is indistinguishable from the Nazi rhetoric that led to Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ, Romani and others being exterminated. This is America 2020. This is where the GOP has taken us. https://t.co/CHMLg804mp

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) September 20, 2020

The guy who told a group of British businessmen in 2018 "you've all got such good bloodlines in this room (and) such amazing DNA" has believed in eugenics for a long time. Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio has explained

The racehorse theory of human development explains Trump's belief in his suitability for political leadership, despite the fact that he has never held office. He's absolutely convinced that America's problems will be solved by his God-given management skills, bankruptcies notwithstanding. You are either born with superior qualities — the right DNA — or you are not. And people get what they deserve. In his case, that includes the White House.

President Trump was convinced they got what they deserved, and it's likely he believes that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died as he expected from  Covid-19 got what they deserved, too. And it's why Donald Trump's Covid-19 policy merely masqueraded as malpractice and malfeasance while it covered up a deep well of evil.

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