A must-read tirade of an article by David Frum in The Atlantic

[stopbush]

“That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

“The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

“For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump.

“Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.“


https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/?fbclid=IwAR0dgGf6q5B9STY1kn_eHhNhnsK27K2Z7ACapXTKI2BSdFD2BPwk0esWgP8

[dhill926]

1. Americans are DYING for his failures...

[ancianita]

29. +1000 My first and everyday thought.

[BComplex]

2. This is NOT just trump: It is the entire republican party, with Fox "news" and rush limbaugh.

It is their utter disregard for the United States of America, and for their total hate of our government and our FORM of government. They do not respect voting/elections: they will NOT PROTECT OUR RIGHTS to vote, or have fair elections.

Again: THE REPUBLICANS HATE OUR GOVERNMENT.

This is trump as the HEAD of the America-hating republican party.

This is on them. Every last one of them.

[DBoon]

5. It is 40 years of anti-government right wing doctrine that is failing

Reagan, Rush Limbaugh and his AM radio imitators, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Fox News, Sara Palin, W Bush....

Their end result is a line of coffins

[BComplex]

9. So true. And we have an enemy trying to destroy our government from within.

Why can't those idiots see what's happening? Actually, I think this whole Corona Virus episode is waking a few of them up, but not many. Fox keeps hammering them with the propaganda that is making this whole machine run.

[OMGWTF]

35. Fux News has brainwashed too many Americans. And now there's OAN. They're evil.

[SheltieLover]

20. This!👆

K&R

[Roy Rolling]

34. Sheesh

I thought we ran these assholes out after Nixon. This time, it’ll be for good. And run them out of town on a rail we will.

If Trump doesn’t sell the rails for scrap metal first.

[DENVERPOPS]

25. The key to this whole cabal

Is the United States Republican Senators........The Dems should be concentrating on those Senate Elections, because they are THE key to all of his power and his administrations power.......Without that Republican Controlled Senate, he evaporates overnight.....

[patphil]

28. A whole lot of Republicans worked hard to enable the Trump shit show.

They had a chance to take him out, and didn't take it.
They still support him.
They are every bit as guilty as Trump.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Great read. Lays it out in sequences in detail with hard-hitting punching. . . . nt

[Thekaspervote]

17. David Frum has taken hard hitting punches at dotard from the time of his election

Thx for sharing..great piece

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. David Frum tweet: "Regular reminder that Donald Trump's core competency is not

David Frum tweet:  ? "Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims."

Then he met the corona virus. His response: continue to try to dupe gullible victims.

[handmade34]

4. my anger

directed at trump and the republicans is intense... the helplessness I feel is overwhelming at times... I want to act and what I do seems so inadequate... I want him gone and I don't care how

good article... trump is a failure... but we knew that years ago

[Scarsdale]

31. Me too.

The fact that they do not even try to conceal what they are doing anymore is even more frustrating. They do not care if we know they are corrupt, and heartless. It seems more like a badge of honor to them. Like saying "We will do whatever we want, break any laws and there is nothing you can do about it" A democratic president would never violate the emoluments clause the way he has ben allowed to do. The gop keeps quiet, letting him do as he pleases, no comments in public. COWARDS are afraid of a big overgrown, spoiled baby who throws tantrums daily. He has never held a real job, or faced consequences for his misdeeds - EVER. This virus is not his fault, but the actions, or I should say inactions before and since are ALL ON HIM, and the GOP. He is responsible for the tremendous loss of life.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

45. They don't try to conceal it because the propaganda machine works.

[appalachiablue]

6. All of that plus don't omit the ratings & greed-driven worst of some media

[superpatriotman]

7. That rump is the president

Ideologues like David Frum’s fault.

[OMGWTF]

36. At least he finally woke up and is trying to help.

[sop]

8. Add our country's health crisis and economic depression to Trump's long list of failures.

It cannot be repeated enough: Everything Trump touches dies. This needs to be Joe's campaign slogan in 2020.

[OMGWTF]

37. Trump can add "Mass Murderer" to his very impressive criminal resume.

[Laelth]

10. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[mcar]

11. That was amazing!

Delineates IMPOTUS' failings from the beginning.

It didn’t have to be this way. If somebody else had been president of the United States in December 2019—Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Mike Pence, really almost anybody else—the United States would still have been afflicted by the coronavirus. But it would have been better prepared, and better able to respond.

Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.

[genxlib]

12. That is a long and well done

I know it is frustrating to consider never-Trumpers as allies. But their voices can be important to blast past the claims of partisanship.

[cwydro]

13. Rec

[NoMoreRepugs]

14. 60million dipshit Deplorables think otherwise.

[kentuck]

15. It needs to be repeated all over social media.

It is Trump's fault.

[lagomorph777]

21. Trump's Plague.

Trump is the Plague Bearer. A pox on his house.

[crickets]

16. Lengthy, scathing indictment. If you need one source of information

for how much of our current situation really is Trump's fault, this article covers it well. It's a shame Frum stopped short of the obvious point: Trump should step down. Frum teed it up magnificently, then walked away.

[yaesu]

18. We only have 20 cases & like a miracle it will be gone-tRump the dumpf. nt

[Tetrachloride]

22. "Fail" is the incorrect word.

The "F" bomb is also not correct.

These words imply that Trump was attempting good but made a tragic mistake.

[bucolic_frolic]

23. Trump has failed. Trump is failing. Trump will fail again.

veni vidi vici

Frum has this one right. Amazing these never trump republicans haven't figured out a way to remove trump. At one time they were the intellectual cabal behind the GOP. Now they're left talking to themselves and for some reason still undisclosed, no sitting GOP officeholder pays any attention to them.

[Hekate]

27. They are in the wilderness because the GOP as it is today despises intellectuals...

The GOP leadership of today much prefers "low information voters" who can be readily manipulated. We're not talking about The Common Man of our foundational mythology -- the modern GOP that has embraced Trump wants genuine knuckledraggers.

The Republican Party of the excellent Eisenhower, even of the awful Nixon, is long dead.

[bucolic_frolic]

32. Never Trumpers should sue them for trademark infringement /nt

[Hekate]

24. Old Neocons like Frum are not stupid. Nor did they want to destroy the US federal government.

I hated their foreign policy objectives. And hated Dubya, and his ass-kissing of the Evangelicals and their theocratic backers.

I don't know for sure, but it has always seemed to me that Neocons as a group were all never-Trumpers, and several, like Frum, are well-worth reading.

Thanks for this OP, stopbush.

[yodermon]

42. Ari Fleischer a notable exception n/t

[coti]

26. Brutal and 100% deserved, every word. nt

[ananda]

30. Trump and Reeps are a death cult now.

All they want to do now is milk as much money
as they can from the government and from states
being forced to pay them for supplies, along with
trying to bump up companies for insider trading.

They don't care if people die, as die they will ...
and if it's not from cv, it will be from lack of
affordable health insurance, inability to pay for
high priced drugs, inability to survive negative
environmental impacts, etc.

[Mickju]

40. There need to be firing squads.

Until now, I have been firmly against capital punishment.

[hedda_foil]

44. I prefer the traditional punishment for traitors: hanging, drawing and quartering.

The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors.

Wikipedia

[Mickju]

46. That would work too! lol

[Cozmo]

33. 'I'm the Last Thing Standing Between You and the Apocalypse'

REMEMBER? It's been said over and over sgain

[Mickju]

38. This article is excellent!

Trump is a maniac.

[barbtries]

39. kick and rec

it's long and worth it.

[scarletwoman]

41. Definitely a "DO-NOT-MISS" article! Thank you! (nt)

[Blue Owl]

43. It's time for the proclaimation to be made: "Donal Trump: You're Fired"

n/t

[Stuart G]

47. Great Article, Thank You for posting.