The end of last week marked a couple of turning points. COVID-19 death and hospitalization projections were revised down significantly. Meanwhile, Attorney General Barr released new documents and ramped up public criticism of the previous administration’s handling of the alleged Trump/Russia collusion investigation in 2016.
That’s two very inconvenient developments for Democrats desperate to defeat the president in November.
For the last month, little else has been in the news but the virus sweeping the globe. It didn’t take Democrats long to attempt to blame the Trump administration for a pandemic born in and covered up by China with an assist from the World Health Organization.
The truth of the matter is no one imagined something of this magnitude derailing our lives any more than we imagined terrorists hijacking commercial planes and slamming them into buildings nearly 20 years ago.
We can armchair quarterback our readiness and ability to foresee or imagine such things, but the truth is everyone from the mainstream media to leading medical voices like Dr. Fauci to state and city officials across the country, to our elected officials in Washington D.C. were all caught by surprise to varying degrees.
Anyone – and I mean anyone – who suggests this virus was a fault or failure of President Trump can be proven an imbecile by simply clicking the links embedded in this story. Of course there were problems early. How can anyone expect perfection battling a surprise invasion of a pandemic sweeping a country as vast and populated as ours?
A month later, it’s hard to criticize the efficacy of the Trump administration’s response after the initial hysteria surrounding ventilators, tests, hospital overflow, etc. The projected deaths have been revised down dramatically because of mitigation efforts cheered and led by the White House. Ventilator manufacturing was ramped up, even though it appears we had plenty without making any new ones.
The original hotspot – Washington state – just tore down their makeshift Army field hospitals and returned ventilators to the national stockpile. Governor Cuomo of New York and Governor Newsom of California are currently hosting huge, floating Navy hospitals on their shores barely in use at this hour.
Have there been deaths? Yes, and each is tragic. Do all of us still need to be vigilant to avoid spreading the disease? Certainly. Have there been stories of individual hospitals under stress and strain. Of course there have been.
But the overwhelming majority of states, communities, hospitals, individuals and the private sector can take great solace in knowing we stepped up to mitigate the spread, treat the sick, and race to find medical treatments and earlier testing to alleviate the severity of symptoms should anyone contract COVID-19 in the future.
We’re turning the page on this story no matter the cable news outpost still attempting to terrify you. Any mistakes have been greatly outweighed by the resilience, patience, fortitude, and ingenuity of the American people. But there’s still a lot of fear, and that’s what Democrats hope they can keep alive and well through November.
There are two things they know will be their electoral undoing if allowed to take hold. First, the hobbled economy returning to its place of strength is the greatest threat, as its axiomatic presidents don’t lose elections in strong economies.
A close second is Attorney General Barr and his lead investigator John Durham rooting around in the Obama Department of Justice misdeeds of 2016. Last Friday, a new collection of Justice Department documents was released and confirms officials knowingly used fake “intelligence” against the Trump campaign in 2016 to obtain a FISA warrant to begin spying on Team Trump internally.
As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explained to me, Attorney General Barr can make a credible case that candidate Donald Trump’s civil rights were violated when Obama-era government authorities willfully misused their powers to derail a constitutionally protected campaign as well as infringe upon Trump supporters’ rights in casting their votes.
If the general public were ever to be armed with honest and unfiltered facts about what happened to Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016 at the hands of the Obama administration, the entirety of the former president’s eight-year legacy and all those associated with him would be burned to the ground. Especially his China-friendly vice president.
This, in part explains the moving goalposts for the current pandemic. Over the weekend, CNN’s Jake Tapper among others mysteriously began asking if it will be safe to vote in November.
Huh? I thought we were talking about May 1st as a target date to get the country up and running again. Why ask about six months from now? It’s not unlike a player faking an injury in the last minutes of the game when they have no timeouts left. Stretch the clock. Buy some time. Sew confusion and new narratives.
“What if it’s unsafe to vote? How can we trust Trump won’t try to screw us out of voting? What if Trump tries to suppress the vote?” Just pick your wild-eyed narrative now. Should the economy rebound and Trump look like he could win re-election, they’re going to need a new Russia scandal to blame.
Which is why Joe Biden’s real running mate won’t be the politician he chooses to wave and smile with him from the campaign trail. His real running mate will be the news item Democrats hope holds the American public hostage for another six months.
“BIDEN/COVID 2020.”
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