Mitch McConnell is a Whining, Lying, Bitch!

        In the continuing effort of the Trump administration to shift blame for their miserable handling of the current pandemic onto someone else, Bitch McConnell has now resorted to time travel. Trump tried it earlier with his claim that “We were left with a bad test.” (the CoVid-19 antigen test). Once it was pointed out that there couldn’t have been any test when Trump ascended to the throne, since the virus wasn’t even discovered yet, ergo no virus, no test, that line of bullshit was discarded.

        McConnell’s latest is even worse, since it is, as is most of what issues from his mouth, a bald-faced lie. McConnell actually complained that Obama didn't leave Trump a “pandemic game plan.” Just like his pimp, Broadway Donnie, and as Trump has done repeatedly during the pandemic, McConnell also laid undeserved blame at Obama's feet.

       "They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell whined. 

        There are several issues here. Issue one, Trump should have taken office ready to lead and, when appropriate, listen to those who “know stuff” about public health issues such as pandemics when and if the need arose. It did and he largely hasn’t. Barack Obama had no Bush 43 “playbook” for dealing with Ebola, but he has yet to blame his predecessor for that.  

       The second and much more damning reality is that Obama's White House National Security Council categorically did leave the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic. The document, whose existence was publicly revealed in March, is called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents. (a convoluted way to say “Pandemics”).

        At 40 pages plus 29 appendices, the document contains step-by-step advice such as what questions to ask (probably not all that important to Trump who doesn’t listen, ask Dr Fauci), decisions to make, and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It includes sample documents that officials could use for inter-agency meetings. And it explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.

        Departing Obama administration officials also led an in-person pandemic response exercise for senior incoming Trump officials in January 2017 -- as required by a new law on improving presidential transitions that Obama signed in 2016. This mandatory meeting, oddly, was attended by Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and addressed how to deal with a hypothetical flu crisis, among other scenarios. Notably absent were POTUS and VPOTUS.  Another interesting note here: Rick Perry was out of the Trump cabinet before the pandemic, therefore one of those who had been briefed was missing. However, the other Cabinet level attendee, Ms. Chao, is the current Secretary of Transportation and the wife of (wait for it) Mitch McConnell.

         I mention this because McConnell should have known his wife was briefed and aware of the “Playbook” prior to slandering the Obama Administration while lying about its existence.

        Perry’s absence also highlights another Trump characteristic I have detailed earlier, that being that while there has been rapid turnover in this administration (far more days of unfilled cabinet positions than the last 40 years combined) that lack of continuity in the various departments also works against efforts to function as a team, especially when the captain cares only about his poll numbers.   

        What prompted me to single out this particular type of blatant lie (there have been so many) is that it eerily parallels events in the Bush 43 administration.

        Senior Clinton administration officials, called before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, detailed how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation. They detailed the presence of a security and terrorism ‘white paper” brief, apparently ignored by those neocons who pulled Bush’s strings.

        They (outgoing Clinton staffers) said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, then Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others. Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterrorism coordinator, categorically stated that the warning about the Al Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led. And yet 9/11 happened.

        It seems that warnings prepared by Democrats, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, “Just don’t get no respect.”