New York Attorney General Letitia James has responded to attempts by Donald Trump and the adult children of his first marriage to defy subpoenas in
her investigation of the Trump Organization’s financial practices, and
she did not come to play. The new filings provide the most detailed view
yet of an investigation that has happened mainly without public
showboating or extensive leaks.
In two lengthy documents—one explaining why the Trumps should be legally compelled to testify and another detailing relevant facts uncovered by the investigation to date—James lays out the evidence for the Trump Organization having used “fraudulent
or misleading” asset valuations to maneuver for the best possible loans
or tax assessments, and the specific involvement of Donald Trump,
Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. Eric Trump has already been deposed
in the investigation after his efforts to refuse failed.
For each of the Trumps in question, the attorney general’s filings
detail a series of documents they signed, and phone calls or meetings in
which they participated, during which misleading or fraudulent
valuations were attached to properties, loans were lobbied for, or tax
benefits were obtained. Their testimony is therefore relevant to a
legitimate investigation, the documents show—not the politically
motivated “witch hunt” the Trumps have alleged in their efforts to avoid
testifying.
But the really fun stuff comes in the supplemental verified petition
laying out some of the factual basis for the investigation. A lot of it
is creative bookkeeping—and some of it is close to home. Trump inflated
the size and worth of his own apartment in Trump Tower. The apartment is
an imposing 10,996 square feet, but that wasn’t enough for Trump, who
claimed it was 30,000 square feet, and reported its value on that basis
in official documents. Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of
the Trump Organization, conceded that this inflated the property’s
value by $200 million, “give or take.”
Trust Donald Trump to lie about how big his house is. It stands to
reason, though. We already knew he lies about the size of everything
else.
The Trumps also repeatedly offered financial valuations for Trump and
his company and then separate estimates of the brand value of the Trump
name … without admitting that the financial valuation that was not
supposed to include brand value actually did include it.
That inflated what was supposed to be a straightforward assessment of
how much his properties were worth, and then added a separate statement
about the brand value that had already been included, double counting
the most nebulous and questionable part of the value to begin with.
Between 2004 and 2014, Trump’s claims about the worth of his Seven
Springs property rose from $80 million to $291 million, an inflation
that “includes the full amount that would be generated from the sale of
the non-existent homes without taking into account the years it would
take to construct infrastructure, build homes, obtain necessary
approvals, and sell the number of homes identified in the supporting
data.”
Valuations for Trump’s Westchester golf club were done on the basis
of a specific number of memberships being sold with a $150,000
initiation fee—even as memberships were being sold with no initiation
fee.
It goes on, for more than 100 pages of evidence filed to show why the
attorney general’s office should be allowed to compel the Trumps to
testify, thereby potentially getting more evidence. This isn’t just for
Donald Trump bragging about his own inflated worth in magazine
interviews. It’s information his company prepared for the purpose of
getting loans, insuring properties, and getting tax benefits. Trump can
lie about his net worth all he wants to reporters, but when he does it
in official documents for the purposes of getting financial benefit,
that’s where it can cause problems. Letitia James is not playing around,
and these filings show she already has a lot to work with—but that
doesn’t mean that Donald, Don Jr., and Ivanka get to evade testimony.
Stephen
Colbert observed the federal holiday for Martin Luther King on Monday
evening, “a day in which we all celebrate Dr King’s legacy by taking his
words out of context to make it look like he agrees with whatever we’re
saying”.
The
US Senate marked King’s birthday, the Late Show host continued, by
“doing what they do best: nothing”. Hopes for a voting rights protection
bill were dashed
on Monday by the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who opposed lifting
the filibuster that would allow Democrats to pass the measure without
Republican support. “What is the legislative filibuster other than a
tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by
senators representing a broader cross-section of Americans?” she said on
the Senate floor.
“No. No. Not representing a broader
cross-section of Americans? The 50 senators who are currently
filibustering the voting rights bill represent 41 million fewer
Americans than the senators who support it,” Colbert protested. “Stop
acting like the filibuster is anything other than an anti-democratic
tool – which is also a pretty good description of Kyrsten Sinema.”
To
illustrate the point more eloquently, Colbert summoned an actually full
quote by King from 5 July 1963: “I think the tragedy is we have a
Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who
would use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even
voting. They won’t let the majority of senators vote, and certainly they
wouldn’t want the majority of people to vote because they know they do
not represent the majority of American people. In fact, they represent
in their own states a very small minority.”
“The sad thing is Dr
King could make the exact same statement today, and it would be just as
relevant,” Colbert noted, “as long as he mentioned Wordle.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers
also mocked Republican figures for bending King’s words to their own
ends, such as Florida senator Marco Rubio, who tweeted a conveniently
partial quote: “When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every
American was to fall heir.”
“Did you read any further than that?”
Meyers fumed, “or did you just pull up the text of the speech and do a
control-F for ‘things that make it sound like he agrees with me’?
Because dude, you gotta read just two more lines” to see that the rest
of the quote condemns American racism and notes the country “has
defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are
concerned”.
“Man, it’s times like these where you just wish Rubio
would go back to his old job as the picture that comes with the frame,”
Meyers joked. “I know they’re liars and con artists, but Dr King was
essentially saying ‘you made a promise, and you didn’t keep it,’ and
Rubio just quoted the ‘you made a promise’ part.
“That would be
like quoting Since U Been Gone, but not the chorus,” he added, mocking
Rubio: “As Kelly Clarkson said, ‘and all you’d ever hear me say, is how I
picture me with you. That’s all you’d ever hear me say’ – moving words
about a love that lasted forever.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel checked in on the former president, who held a conspiracy-fueled rally
over the weekend in Florence, Arizona. “Fatty LaBelle himself took the
stage to scream about being cheated out of the election and to lash out
at all the networks who refuse to go along with that,” Kimmel
summarized.
More specifically, Trump called coverage of his big lie of election fraud “a lot of bullshit, that’s what it is”.
“Yeah, that’s what it is,” Kimmel laughed. “Somehow he went from bigly to big lie.”
Trump
also offered a Covid conspiracy theory Kimmel called “outlandish even
by Trump standards”: that Democrats are “denigrating white people” in
Covid treatments to “determine who lives and who dies … it’s
unbelievable to think this.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s super unbelievable to think this,” Kimmel retorted.
Trump also claimed that when it comes to Covid treatments, white people are “being sent to the back of the line.”
“Where
does he even get this stuff?” Kimmel marveled. “This is a man who
hasn’t waited in a line since like hot lunch in the fourth grade. White
people are being sent to the back of the line? I guess Martin Luther
King’s dream has been realized at last.”
There. I said it. *WHEW.* I got that out of the way. I’ve admitted to
a lot of wrongdoings in my time (like that one time I accidentally
rebooted the production database and made life really difficult for my
coworkers for around 5 minutes). But of the many things of which I am
ashamed, having Jim Jordan as my Representative ranks right up there.
Because he’s my Representative (no matter how unwillingly), I follow
him on Facebook. He provides the most insightful posts, like “Freedom!”*
Yes. His Facebook feed is a small curated compendium of his best House moments, as determined by Jim Jordan.
One of the things I’ve learned by following Jim Jordan is, neither Jim Jordan** nor his sycophants have ANY FUCKING CLUE
about Democrats. I’m not even talking about what distinguishes a
liberal from a leftist from a traditional Democrat. As far as they’re
concerned, all democrats are exactly alike. We’re all against
guns entirely, all anti-family, we all want to kill all children, and
every single common-sense suggestion (whether proposed as a mandate or
not, like simply the suggestion of wearing masks to protect others from
your Typhoid-Mary-ass-self) is JUST ONE MORE STEP IN FASCISM***.
They love to use the terms communism, socialism, Marxism, Democrat,
and fascism as if they are the same thing. Because they are fucking
ignorant. I’m not even going to get into the reasons the Democratic
party is none of these things (except Democrat, obviously; and some are
Marxist, but how is that a big deal when all modern capitalism is based
on Marx’s axiological study of capitalism? I mean, modern capitalists
exploit Marx’s insights into capitalism for their own gain).
And this is part of the problem: it’s extremely difficult to counter this dedicated willful ignorance.
Yes, it’s willful ignorance. That’s a huge part of the problem. As Bob Altemeyer points out (you did
follow the footnotes, right?), the people who follow authoritarians do
so partly because they don’t want to think about complex problems, which
require complex solutions. They want simple problems because they want
simple answers. That’s a solid 30% of the population that just wishes
reality were simple, even if it’s wrong. Which tracks with President
Steamed Tangerine’s constant support numbers.
Anyway. If you’ve stuck with me this long, here’s the point I’d like to make (not presented as actual truth, just my take):
GOP supporters have no fucking clue about the constitution of the Democratic party.
So I’d like to break down the modern Democratic ideology, for those
who either don’t understand or those who are willfully ignorant.
Let’s make one thing clear: not all Democrats agree with all these issues. I’ll call out variations in ideology when I can.
Let’s start with the most basic axiom:
We Are All In This Together
This is a simple statement, yet it distills centuries of
philosophical debate into the essence of civilization. It outlines what
defines civilization: individuals cooperating to help each other. That’s
the purpose of civilization, isn’t it? To bind together and help each
other?
It defines a morality: what helps each other is good; what helps some
but harms others is bad (and finding the balance between the two is what
politics is supposed to be about).
A corollary to this is, society is defined by how much it invests in
common good, like health and home. With this simple axiom, a society is
judged not by its reverence for wealth, but its compassion for
adversity, and its advocacy and material support for individual growth.
Do all Democrats abide by this?
No. FUCK no.
I mean, this shouldn’t even be a partisan issue. Yet it is. The modern GOP is willing to turn on each other. They obviously
don’t believe civilization exists for us to band together for mutual
protection and strength. Their reverence for the reification of Burnt
Orange declares them on the side of Exploit Everyone (which is the exact
*opposite* of civilization).
And likewise,
some Democrats also seem to have friction with the idea that We Are All
In This Together. I can only assume they have their own reasons for
that. I can also only assume those reasons are extremely fucking
selfish.
In a hypothetical
Democratic bestiary, these Democrats are known as Selfish Fucking
Assholes Who Are Willing To Sacrifice Everyone Else For Their Own Gain.
So I guess it isn’t a strictly partisan issue.
GOP Has No Fucking Clue About Progressives
Let’s face it: Pretty much every Republican these days lumps
Democrats and Progressives together. They do this because Progressives
support things like socialized (universal) health care, free university
education, and basic universal income.
Progressives support these things because they make sense.
First, a society should be judged by how it treats the least privileged,
not how it treats the most affluent (this goes back to the basic
principle that a society is individuals banding together for the good of
all). Also, it makes practical sense: the more educated, the healthier,
the more secure a person is, the more they can create. This contributes
not just in the engineering sense (though that’s part of it), but in
the cultural sense.
And if you think contributing to culture is worthless, let me remind
you of Star Wars, Lord Of The Rings, The Matrix, and Harry Potter.
But.
This allows the GOP to (wrongly) label Progressives as Socialists.
And since they don’t distinguish between socialism, communism, Marxism,
and fascism, they get to call them every Bad Word the GOP wants, without
pushback.
Because as identified above, their audience only wants simple
problems with simple solutions. Socialism, communism, and Marxism are
all very complex philosophical frameworks, almost none of which really
apply to the Progressives, let alone Democrats.
And so the GOP gets to label people like AOC “socialist,” which is a
bad word for the GOP (even though they have no clue what a socialist is,
and what distinguishes a democratic socialist from a national
socialist, for instance). And then they stack bad math on bad math to
apply a warped transitive property to call all Democrats “Marxist.”
Which is a bad word for them. Because Republicans are ignorant as fuck.
I won’t get into the reason modern capitalists rely on Marx’s axiomatic analysis of capitalism rather than Adam Smith’s.
Republicans Willfully Conflate Fringe With Core
Let’s face it: if the Overton Window wasn’t slammed so far to the
extreme right to the point where there is no air flow, things like
universal health care, free university education, and basic fucking voting rights wouldn’t be issues.
And yet here we are. Society (and the news) amplifies everything the
radical right has to say. Critical race theory is a concept taught in a
very few advanced legal programs, yet somehow it’s become a flashpoint
in elementary and secondary education, a hot topic for local school
districts. Very few Democratic politicians advocate outright banning of
guns, yet’s that’s a major campaign slogan, just flung around like a blackjack at a pillow fight.
And The Big Lie is still represented as “unsupported allegations.”
Not a lie. Not an outright brazen mendacious attempt at a coup. Just
“unsupported allegations.”
Somehow, the GOP is skilled at taking what should be a valid
non-fringe political position (say, universal healthcare) and turning it
into a bombastic strawman and associate it with the core position of
the Democrats (which it is not, even if it should be), and then take
their fringiest positions (the Jan 6 insurrection was a harmless protest
by patriots) and turn it into their core position.
And in the end, the insurrection fringe seems more reasonable than the socialism of universal healthcare. Or more accurately, us taking care of each other.
What Republicans Don’t Understand
Let’s face it: the every-day GOP supporter is convinced the Communist
Marxist Radical Socialist Democrats want to take their guns, force them
into experimentation, take away their freedoms (without really defining
what those freedoms are), and we’re just basically evil.
Part of this is the Fox News 24/7 cultural warfare coverage. I mean,
changing policies on masks as we learn new things? Government is
clueless and simultaneously lying! And so on. Because changing behavior
based on evolving knowledge is complex.
Republicans are fed this bullshit narrative all day: Liberals are bad
(and by liberals they mean Democrats, even though not all Democrats are
Liberal). And by exclusion, that means Republican are good. But only
the Republicans they deem Republican enough.
Republicans don’t understand the general Democratic party doesn’t want to take away all guns. They don’t want to give undocumented immigrants (“illegal aliens” in their parlance) money or phones or anything of value. Hell, Democrats deport asylum seekers at a rate consistent with even that recent inarticulate President.
They don’t understand they want most of the same things Democrats want.
But mostly what Republicans don’t understand is this: the extent they’ve been deceived. Misled. Lied to. Manipulated.
What Democrats Don’t Understand
Let’s face it: Republicans don’t care. You’re still a fuckin’ Marxist, and they don’t even know what Marxism means.
It’s just a bad word for them.
So What Is The Modern Democratic Ideology?
Let’s face it: There’s no one ideology.
I can say for certain the Republicans who claim the Democrats just
want fascism, or communism, or socialism or even Marxism, are just
willfully ignorant fucks who either don’t know the meaning of any of
those words, or use them to gain willfully ignorant followers.
I’d like to believe modern Democrats share some core values:
I’d like to believe we value justice, and are angry and abhorred by
systemic injustice. I’d like to believe we support Black Lives Matter
for their unwavering pursuit of equal justice for all.
I’d like to believe we support economic justice. I’d like to believe we all believe every job
deserves a living wage. And by living, I mean, able to afford to go out
to dinner once in a while, and take in a show, and maybe even buy that
game system. But most certainly I mean, have a place to live and quality
delicious food on which to subsist.
I’d like to think we believe every vote should count, and every vote should be easy and convenient to cast, guaranteed.
I’d like to say we believe there should be universal regulations
concerning firearms. It’s not just felons who should be excluded from
owning a weapon; domestic abusers should also have their right to bear
arms stripped. (Also, I’d like “A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,”
added back to the 2nd Amendment, as it was in the Constitution.) And
background checks. We should be able to agree on that. And also, who the
hell needs an AR-15? Seriously? Are you that scared?
I’d like to say all that, but I can’t,
because there’s not a large enough percentage of Democrats who agree on
many of these points.
There’s no one set of rules Democrats
agree on. It’s not even like we’re not the strawman Republicans like Jim
Jordan like to present as partisan chum; we’re not a single bloc.
There’s no single identity.
I do like to think that, in our own way, we’re chasing that one
single ideal, that one source with many possible interpretations:
We’re All In This Together.
And
then there is Nancy Pelosi. They wanted to hang her from a gallows on
Jan. 6. Could it be that she's just a little too good at putting the
Donald and his band of merry liars in their places.
------
* Yes, that was the full and exact contents of one of his recent posts.
** I kinda like using both his names. It’s like Colin Robinson from
“What We Do In The Shadows.” It’s ominous, but pedestrian at the same
time. Also, they are both only ever energy vampires, and nothing more.
*** Because they are completely ignorant about fascism, which is why they are willing participants. SEE Bob Altemeyer, “The Authoritarians”
President Joe Biden has come out swinging in the first couple
weeks of 2022. His fiery speeches blasting Donald Trump for inciting the
Jan. 6 insurrection and condemning the GOP's nationwide assault on the
fundamental right to vote were a historic pivot point for the president.
Biden, a longtime consensus builder with an amiable demeanor,
surrendered his olive branch to the realities of the knife fight we now
find ourselves in to save the republic.
“Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect Americans’ right to vote,” Biden said during his speech in Atlanta. “Not one. Not one.”
Biden's unequivocal indictment of Trump and his Republican
enablers ushered in a new day in the fight for American democracy. As
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said,
Biden’s voting rights speech "clearly struck a nerve." That was
particularly true of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who issued a
blistering response from the Senate floor—otherwise known as
Republicans playing defense.
None of this is to suggest that Democrats will ultimately
succeed in getting critical voting rights legislation passed when it is
finally debated in the upper chamber and likely defeated with the help
of two Democratic senators who have assured Americans a Senate rule is
far more integral to democracy than free and fair elections.
But the White House has made an overt shift from the behind the
scenes inside game it worked for a solid year to a very public campaign
against the saboteurs of our democracy.
"I've been having these quiet conversations with the members of
Congress for the last two months," Biden said. "I'm tired of being
quiet!" he added, pounding the lectern.
If Democrats fail to pass voting rights legislation, it will
undoubtedly be a loss for the country and democracy itself. But from a
political standpoint, this is the fight we want to be having: Democrats stand for the fundamental right to vote while Republicans are united against it.
Importantly, the debate isn't happening in a vacuum. Not only did Biden knock it out of the park
with his Jan. 6 commemoration speech, but the Justice Department
investigation of the Capitol siege is starting to get juicy. This week,
federal prosecutors finally indicted Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group the Oath Keepers, on seditious conspiracy charges.
"The indictment filed against Rhodes and 10 other
Oath Keepers or associates marks the first time the historically rare
charge of seditious conspiracy has been leveled in connection with the
wide-ranging Jan. 6 probe," writesTheWashington Post.
This is what momentum looks like as Democrats build a political
narrative around a Republican Party that has given way to
anti-democratic extremism. Public hearings from the Jan. 6 panel will
add another layer to that narrative.
It's by no means perfect, but it's a good start to an election
season that must turn on whether voters are with democracy or against
it. And President Biden is building the case that Republicans are very
clearly against it.
President Joe Biden did what he needed to do to promote his booming economy as he slapped down Republicans' intransigence.
Joe Bidendid
something many have been waiting for him to do for a long time. Biden
first acknowledged his darn good economy and played it up.
"One leading economic analyst describes what
we've accomplished in 2021 as the strongest first-year economic track
record of any president in the last 50 years," Biden said. "Today
America is the only leading economy in the world where the economy as a
whole is stronger than before the pandemic now."
The President then neutralizes a Republican talking point about inflation.
"I hear Republicans say today that my
talking about this strong record shows that I don't understand a lot of
people are still suffering," Biden said. "They say that I'm not focused
on inflation. Malarkey!"
I wish the President would have said then
that the greed of the capitalist corporations is taking advantage of
their pricing power. After all, there are no real shortages of most
items. Moreover, the supply chain problem is ascrewup of the private sectorpartially
reliant on just-in-time inventory (JITI). Instead, the President said
later that capitalism without competition is not capitalism. I beg to
disagree. According to Milton Friedman, the sole purpose of executives
are to maximize profits for the shareholders. Destroying competition is
one of its tools. Free enterprise should be what America strives for
going forward. But that debate is beyond the scope of this post but I
cover it in my book titled “How to make America, Utopia.”
Joe Biden then slaps back at Republicans. He puts them on the defensive.
"They want to talk down the recovery because
they voted against the legislation that made it happen," Biden said.
They voted against the tax cuts for middle-class families. They voted
against the funds we needed to reopen our schools, to keep police
officers and firefighters on the job. Lower health care premiums. They
voted against the funds we're now using to buy COVID booster shots, more
anti-viral pills."
Biden then detailed his way forward.
"I refuse to let them stand in the way of
this recovery, and now my focus is on keeping this recovery strong and
durable notwithstanding Republican obstructionism," Biden said.
Every Democrat and Progressive should lean
into the economy. Highlight how great it has recovered. Then point out
that had they followed Republican policies, the financial support given
to the poor, middle-class, and small businesses would not have occurred.
After all, the Republican vote proved it. The economy would have
tanked.
Had Biden followed Republican policies, the financial support given
to the poor, middle-class, and small businesses would not have occurred.
On Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court ruled against COVID-19
mandates in a 6-3 vote, with all three Trump-appointed judges—who landed
their roles thanks to a filibuster carve-out—voting that OSHA doesn’t
have the authority to regulate vaccinations by companies. Except for
doctors and hospitals. Because judges don’t have to go into the office,
but they do have to go to the doctor.
The ruling
is based around some blandly twisted reasoning, but it’s down on Page 6
of the decision that the worst aspect of this ruling is revealed. And
it’s a doozy.
“The Solicitor General does not dispute that OSHA is limited to regulating ‘work-related dangers.’ She instead argues that the risk of contracting COVID–19 qualifies as such a danger. We cannot agree. Although COVID–19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather.”
In this ruling, the Supreme Court is explicitly saying that COVID-19
isn’t an “occupational hazard” because it can also occur outside the
workplace. Which provides every employer, every conservative
organization, and every Republican attorney general the perfect opening
to destroy safety regulations across the board.
COVID-19 obviously is a danger that affects people “at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else
that people gather.” But that doesn’t mean that it’s not also a
workplace hazard. Someone might take the greatest possible caution in
their daily life, but if their workplace forces them to be in a position
where they have to spend an extended period of time in the company of a
large number of people—whether that’s as a waitress in a restaurant or a
steward on a plane—the threat posed by their workplace environment can
overwhelm all the precautions they’ve taken at home.
The test the Supreme Court appears to be setting up with this ruling
is that, in order to be regulated under the authority of OSHA, a hazard
must be a threat that takes place in the workplace, but also one unique to
the work environment. For example, workplaces might still be required
to regulate the operation of heavy equipment, but passenger trucks
… hey, people have them at home, at sporting events, etc.
Lifting of heavy objects? That’s certainly something that people do
away from the workplace. So is the use of power tools. Exposure to loud
noises is something that happens in everyday life.
To underscore that this farcically awful construction was not accidental takes no more than dropping down to the next sentences.
“That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day
dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of
communicable diseases. Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily
life—simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks
while on the clock—would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory
authority without clear congressional authorization.”
What the ruling is spelling out here is an explicit gutting of OSHA’s
authority to regulate safety in the work environment. It’s a ruling
that will be will become a touchstone for anyone seeking to bypass
safety requirements big and small. It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card for
placing workers at risk, one that essentially eliminates authority to
oversee worker health and safety.
Republicans went fishing for a ruling against President Biden’s
vaccine mandate that they could bring home, mount over the fireplace,
and brag about next November. What they landed was a whale that will
provide endless gifts to their corporate supporters—and endless misery
for the average worker.
Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans have settled on a
position that seems just a smidge incredible: There is no
pandemic. Downplaying the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease
that it generates has been standard Republican operating procedure
since Donald Trump insisted that cases would soon be “down to zero” and
that COVID-19 would go away “like magic.” But at this point, with
860,000 dead Americans and over 5.5 million lives lost around the
world, in the midst of a wave of disease sending record numbers to
hospitals, pandemic denial seems like something that should be
impossible.
It’s not. Republicans have returned to the idea that people are just,
you know, dying. And that COVID-19 has nothing to do with it.
It’s another trip through irresponsibility, delusion, and jackassery
that started with a badly edited interview, passed through a now deleted
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tweet, and spawned a million gloating I-told-you-so
claims on Facebook. Since then other Republicans, including
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have doubled down on the claim, and the
Republican National Committee (RNC) is proceeding at warp nine into
conspiracy space.
Like so many of the claims during the last five years, this one
started from a misunderstanding, then pivoted to a deliberate lie. It
can be fully expected to become the accepted “truth” for Republicans
moving forward. Here’s the three-step process into how “not from
COVID-19, but with COVID-19” became the new Republican baseline.
Step 1: ABC makes a criminally bad edit of an already bad interview
To say that Rochelle Walensky’s brief term as director of
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been marked by poor
communication is something of an understatement. Communicating with
dolphins is only slightly less frustrating.
It’s not so much that the CDC has been wrong, but
under Walensky the agency has issued unnecessary guidance that includes
caveats and details almost certain to be steamrolled into a mush of
confusion. For example, the idea that people who were asymptomatic but
who tested positive for COVID-19 could cease self-isolation after five
days if they continued to wear a mask. This was predictably turned into
“CDC cuts COVID-19 quarantine to five days” by the media within
30 seconds of its issuance.
But perhaps no single statement has done more damage the CDC’s
reputation than an interview on ABC News. In that interview, Walensky
was asked about the results of a new study showing that vaccines were
very effective in preventing severe illness. Here’s her response as it
appeared on ABC News.
Walensky: “The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%,
occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities. So really, these
are people who are unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging
news in the context of omicron. This means not just to get your primary
series, but to get your booster, and yes, we’re really encouraged by
these results.”
There were any number of reasons to be upset by this statement.
For one thing, Walensky appears to be not just brushing off people with
long-term illness or conditions that make them more susceptible to
COVID-19, but actually gloating about how deaths are restricted
to people who were “unwell to begin with.” Disability advocates—and a
lot of people who suffer from issues such as diabetes and high blood
pressure—were justifiably outraged.
However, it turns out that ABC made an absolutely egregious edit.
This was Walensky’s actual reply to the question about the study.
Walensky: “You know, really important study, if I may
just summarize it. A study of 1.2 million people who were vaccinated
between December and October, and demonstrated that severe disease
occurred in about 0.015% of the people who received their primary
series. And death in 0.003% of those people. The overwhelming
number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four
comorbidities. So really, these are people who are unwell to begin with.
And yes, really encouraging news in the context of omicron. This means
not just to get your primary series, but to get your booster, and yes,
we’re really encouraged by these results.”
All of that went on the cutting room floor at ABC. Clearly, what
Walensky was actually addressing was the results of a single study, a
study that showed just how tremendously effective the vaccines really
are.
However, the complaints of disability advocates remain absolutely valid,
because there was no reason for Walensky to characterize the extremely
low number of deaths found in this study in the way she did. It added no
value to her response. In fact, by answering in this way, Walensky
greatly undercut the point that she was trying to make. That point was not “only sick people died” but “vaccines are tremendously effective.” Walensky’s response remains a masterclass in awful.
But ABC’s editing made everything 1,000 times worse, and queued up exactly what came next.
Step 2: Context gets shredded by the RNC
Those watching the ABC interview might still have picked up on the
fact that Walensky’s statement, no matter how mangled, was
characterizing only vaccinated individuals in one study. But when those
words hit social media, context went out the window. As far the internet
was concerned, this was the beginning and the end of what Walensky had to say.
Granted, that kind of sentence or even phrase-level cherry-picking
has been standard RNC practice for years, but ABC really helped them out
by dropping all context from Walensky’s reply. As a result,
social media soon flooded with Republicans claiming that 75% of all the
people who have died from COVID-19 have been people who were very unwell
to begin with. That prompted, including other things, this now-deleted
Cruz tweet.
Step 3: Double-down and carry on
Cruz may have backed away from that tweet after the editing
fingers of both the RNC and ABC were made clear, but don’t expect him to
stay backed up. Since that initial post, the RNC has doubled down. And
tripled down. In their latest tweet,
they’re back to the language that Republicans used in the opening days
of the pandemic as deaths began to pile up across the country. People
didn’t die from COVID-19, says the RNC. They’re just sick people who happened to die with COVID-19.
Rubio then took this to the next logical step with a claim that the
thousands of people being hospitalized during the omicron spike aren’t
being hospitalized because of COVID-19.
Another wave of misleading & hysterical media coverage
It isn’t “record Covid hospitalizations” when many of those patients are in the hospital for reasons unrelated to Covid
Except that as the article makes clear, there are 145,982 people
hospitalized in U.S. from COVID-19. Not from “reasons unrelated to
COVID.” There’s absolutely nothing in the article cited, or in any other
source, to back up Rubio’s statement.
It doesn’t matter, because the Republican Party has only one reaction to being found wrong on any point: tactical extremism. Rather
than admit the claims about people dying from COVID-19 are the results
of a series of bad, out of context edits, expect Republicans to harden
on this position as a baseline. Expect renewed claims that the CDC is
greatly exaggerating the threat of COVID-19, as well as more of those
videos where people invade their local hospital to “prove” that there’s
no wave of COVID-19 patients.
Expect more resistance to vaccination. Expect more denial of reason. Expect more deaths.
All brought to you by the modern Republican Party, the best friend a virus ever had.
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