So much winning you'll be begging him to stop

MORE THAN 6,000 people have died from the novel coronavirus in the United States. And our country is locked up, stir-crazy at home, trying to make sense of an interminable quarantine as winter turns to spring.

OUR POLITICAL LEADERS? SEEMINGLY STIR-CRAZY as well, engaged in feuds that seem nonsensical, hatching arguments that are detached from reality and getting involved in kayfabe hijinks that assume we’re a bunch of dopes.

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THE SHOW: The USNS Comfort -- a hospital ship -- cruised up the Hudson River this week to help relieve New York City hospitals that were overtaxed from the coronavirus crisis. Images of the white ship with a red cross in front of the Statue of Liberty flooded Twitter. People took it as a hopeful sign that the U.S. government was coming to aid its most iconic city in its time of travail. THE REALITY: The NYT is reporting this morning that the ship has taken only 20 patients, and the “1,000 beds are largely unused, its 1,200-member crew mostly idle.” The head of New York’s largest hospital system said this to the Times: “If I’m blunt about it, it’s a joke.”

THE SHOW: JARED KUSHNER, on Thursday in the White House briefing room, explaining the Strategic National Stockpile: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use. So we’re encouraging the states to make sure that they’re assessing the needs, they’re getting the data from their local situations and then trying to fill it with the supplies that we’ve given them.” THE REALITY: The Strategic National Stockpile website: “When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.”

  Politico

"Our stockpile." Who the fuck does he think is supposed to be using it?

Trump's recent efforts to cast the viral pandemic as “a medical war” [have run into some snags].

As Trump joins the ranks of previous wartime leaders, however, the enemy he is fighting is strikingly unfamiliar: a lethal pathogen that forced Americans into battle with minimal preparation and limited visibility into where this war might take them. Hardly anyone envisioned shelter-in-place orders or deserted streets in major cities when the U.S. recorded its first Covid-19 death at the end of February.

At the time, political pundits were still discussing the impact of impeachment on Trump’s reelection chances. The president himself was fresh off a campaign rally in South Carolina, which he arranged much to the chagrin of the 2020 Democrats competing in a primary that was still in full swing. And White House aides were still celebrating the February jobs report – its expectation-shattering numbers convincing them of their own job security for another four years.

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One of the top challenges Trump and his aides face as they look to history for counsel is that waging war against an “invisible enemy” means there is no clear catalyst.

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He lacks a singular moment he can point to in Rose Garden appearances or campaign ads to rally the public behind this “war.” Instead, he is stuck with wild stock market fluctuations and a rolling death count, all while he gets attacked by his political opponents for a long string of loose comments downplaying the risks of the novel coronavirus in January and February.

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Desperate for insight into how to respond to a staggering death toll and deep recession, the White House machinery is digging through American history for answers, hoping that somewhere in two-and-a-half centuries of war, economic volatility, resilience and patriotism they might find analogs to help rally the nation and protect their boss’s legacy.

  Politico

Perhaps they should be looking for a way to get their boss to stop making matters worse.

A senior speechwriter for one Cabinet official read and then re-read Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address — a powerful sermon on hope in the midst of the Great Depression, best known for Roosevelt's declaration that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

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“Look, we had the Civil War. We lost 600,000 people, right?” Trump said in the White House press briefing room Wednesday. “You know, we lose more here potentially than you lose in world wars as a country, so there’s nothing positive, there’s nothing great about it.”

The "White House machinery" obviously still has some work to do.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The Trump administration quietly changed an online description of the country's Strategic National Stockpile following a press briefing with White House adviser Jared Kushner.

Previously, according to the federal public health emergency website, the Strategic National Stockpile was described as "the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out."

The description continued: "When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency."

That definition disappeared from the site on Friday.

The new, one-paragraph description says the stockpile is meant as a “short-term stopgap.”

"The Strategic National Stockpile's role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available," the website now says.

  The Hill