The America First Problem

“As we outpace what we need we’re going to be sending [ventilators] to Italy,” Trump insisted at his coronavirus briefing. “We’re going to be sending them to France.” https://t.co/1iE0uCD9wz

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 31, 2020

It's hard for me not to hear that Trump envisions ventilators sent all over the world "as we outpace what we need" without sarcastically wondering if he might consider "America first". After all, in the weeks after the first COVID-19 case was detected in the US, instead of ramping up national stockpiles and proceeding with a plan for testing and containment, the administration thought to bundle up medical supplies for China. Which was awful nice of the US, truly. Maybe it was supposed to help with trade talks or something. But it didn't do much for us here (and makes a bit of a mockery of the claims that the Obama Administration left stockpiles so low--so, after three years, we had enough to give away? And Trump and friends couldn't figure out how to fix that? At some point, Trump gets to own the results of his particular form of leadership. (And yes, the problem is his.)

I guess I also wonder about this because there's a nonzero possibility that all states are not going to be treated equally. Beyond his petty slams at Governors Whitmer and Inslee for not being sufficiently grateful for his interest in doing his job and his fairly straight-forward discussion of the need for Governor Cuomo to basically kiss his ass publicly to get what he needs (for the people of New York, who last I checked were Americans), there's little things like the 170 broken ventilators that were sent to California. I'm not saying something like that was on purpose. I've just got no reassurances from available data that it can be ruled out. When Illinois gets a shipment of the wrong type of masks, certainly it could be just a clerical issue, but is it, though?

I note with a little irony that some stooges for the administration are admitting that Trump didn't have his eye on the ball, but whiffed the potential pandemic response because of the impeachment. To which I guess I'd have to say, he should have realized he didn't have the range for the job before he tried fancy extras like extorting foreign allies if he couldn't hang. Also, too, the Republicans in the Senate acquitted him (despite his having pretty much used Godfather-esque language to shake down a foreign leader) even if they should have realized his general attitude towards government was self-directed. Except for the one guy who--get this, was a nominee for that job and had an appreciation for the intelligence involved. Also ironically, this scenario was a part of the discussion for whether this exact attitude of Trump's was reason enough for him to be removed:

Serving as one of several expert witnesses in the first public impeachment hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Karlan said:

"Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that's prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you lived there and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for? What would you think if that president said, 'I would like you to do us a favor? I'll meet with you, and send the disaster relief, once you brand my opponent a criminal.'

Wouldn't you know in your gut that such a president has abused his office? That he'd betrayed the national interest, and that he was trying to corrupt the electoral process? I believe the evidentiary record shows wrongful acts on those scale here."

Karlan used this analogy to contextualize Trump's broad efforts to urge Ukraine into launching investigations that would aid his reelection campaign.

And just like a Republican president before him, it wasn't that he was never warned that there would be a problem with a potential pandemic, or that he had inadequate warning about this one (regardless of whatever happy horseshit we suspect China was putting out so as not to looked weakened). We had the intelligence. Trump just didn't see fit to act. Maybe he might have even considered waiting a virtue, against messing up his economy with uncertainty, or letting bad infection counts mess with his poll numbers. He could allow a little epidemic (as a treat) and then somehow, things would shake out (a vaccine or a cure) and he'd be golden again! (He doesn't know any better. He doesn't know that you can't just change the label on a flu vaccine and confuse the new bug with it. His fixation with chloroquine stems from the same hope for a miracle delivery.)

And he believes his flummery over how good testing is going now ("we're testing more than anyone else!") as if in denial that we're doing more testing, in part, because of the poor start we had. He has told governors he "hasn't heard" there was a problem with testing, which is dangerously absurd.

Trump hasn't. in all of this, been putting America first at all. He's using press conferences with random CEOs who praise his leadership to the high heavens (like the "My Pillow" guy!) to look in charge when he should probably shut the heck up, and leave the talking to the experts. "America First" was always just a racist slogan to discuss a certain kind of white, English-speaking American who Trump wanted to represent. And now his failure to actually know how to put anyone besides himself first is going to get that American's mom-mom killed. And his Administration's attitude to non-citizens, like the folks who plant and pick our food and work in our food producing factories? Here, in what some people still call a "first world" nation, we very probably will even see food shortages.

How was anyone, so unaware and ignorant of what even made America livable, going to make America great? How would this flag-humping signifier pretend to put America First, when he himself is only tolerable to a certain population (who somehow can't separate his reality show self from the one in the mainstream news) once he wrapped himself in a flag and had solemn grifting snake oil squeezers rap Biblically over him? His core is nuclear waste.

Of course he's incapable. He will never put America first, and will play games with aid, and people will die. Didn't you all watch Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria? When he threw paper towels and lied about how much aid they already got and slandered people because he didn't want them to get more? And how he denied the death toll because it made him and his response look bad? And they are Americans. And we are all seeing what that Puerto Rico treatment looks like when applied all over the rest of the US.

"America first" was a slogan. The truth is Trump does Trump. Lather, rinse, repeat.