While he’s not (yet) injecting bleach straight into his veins, Donald Trump announced on Monday that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine, a drug that he touted for weeks as a covid-19 cure but that has actually led to more deaths of patients. “I’m not going to get hurt by it,” he proclaimed. Hmmmm…
Even Fox News hosts think Trump might die:
Aside from potential death, according to the Mayo Clinic, the side effects of taking hydroxychloroquine include, but are not limited to: Blistering, peeling, loosening of the skin; decreased urination; defective color vision; diarrhea; difficulty breathing; feeling that others are watching you or controlling your behavior; feeling that others can hear your thoughts; feeling, seeing, or hearing things that are not there; inability to move the eyes; large, hive-like swelling on the face, eyelids, lips, tongue, throat, hands, legs, feet, and sex organs; noisy breathing; red irritated eyes; severe mood or mental changes; sticking out of the tongue; trouble with breathing, speaking, or swallowing; unusual behavior; and unusual facial expressions.
Sounds about right!
By now, we’ve all learned that Donald Trump and the band of flunkies that make up his administration are no fans of accountability and oversight, likely due to the fact that they are extremely ardent fans of corruption, enriching their corporate golf buddies, and killing people.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is merely the latest Trump administration lackey who has found himself under scrutiny for all of the above. Last Friday, Trump fired the State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick after Pompeo reportedly asked Trump to get rid of Linick. Turns out Linick was investigating Pompeo, and we can’t have that, can we! Now, we know exactly what Linick was scrutinizing: Pompeo’s penchant for using underlings to literally pick up his dry cleaning, which is entirely too on the nose, as well as his love for selling weapons to the Saudi Arabian government, who then used those weapons to kill thousands of people in Yemen, including children.
Here’s more from the New York Times on Pompeo’s best attempt to be cast in the remake of The Devil Wears Prada, emphasis my own:
The inspector general, Steve A. Linick, who leads hundreds of employees in investigating fraud and waste at the State Department, had begun an inquiry into Mr. Pompeo’s possible misuse of a political appointee to perform personal tasks for him and his wife, according to Democratic aides. That included walking the dog, picking up dry-cleaning and making restaurant reservations, one said — an echo of the whistle-blower complaint from last year.
And according to Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Linick was also investigating Pompeo’s role in approving arms sales to the Saudi government in 2019, over the objections of Congress. Some background, from the Times:
The decision to resume lethal aid to the Saudis and Emiratis was a major initiative undertaken by Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Trump, who often discussed the importance of the weapons sales with officers of Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based defense contractor that lobbied heavily to get a 2017 suspension of sales lifted. Congress had imposed the suspension because of discoveries that bomb fragments traced to Raytheon by investigators were linked to a series of Saudi bombings that killed civilians, including children.
Mr. Trump had pushed to resume the sales in 2018, justifying it as a jobs issue.“I want Boeing and I want Lockheed and I want Raytheon to take those orders and to hire lots of people to make that incredible equipment,” he said.
It was Pompeo, eager lap dog that he is, that helped Trump and Raytheon resume sales of that “incredible equipment” by issuing an emergency declaration that specifically cited the Iranian government’s role in the war in Yemen as an excuse to enrich the defense contractor. “Within weeks, those arms were flowing again,” the Times wrote. “By the end of the year, the civilian death toll in Yemen had topped 12,000.”
According to Pompeo, he had no idea Linick was investigating him, though he did confirm that he asked for Linick’s firing. “I went to the president and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn’t performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to, that was additive for the State Department, very consistent with what the statute says he’s supposed to be doing. The kinds of activities he’s supposed to undertake to make us better, to improve us,” Pompeo told the Washington Post, using many words that sure sound like the words of a man who wanted to fire someone because he was investigating him.
- Good, good, goodgoodgoodgoodgood: Unemployment may reach 25 percent, according to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. [Politico]
- No one wants to go to the DNC because they don’t want to die or inadvertently kill someone else, which is reasonable! [New York Times]
- Elizabeth Warren on the death of her brother Donald Reed Herring from covid-19: “It’s always hard to lose someone you love. But to lose someone when you have to wonder: What were their last days like? Were they afraid? Were they cold? Were they lonely? That is a kind of grief that is new to all of us. And my brothers won’t get over this. They just won’t. None of us will.” [The Atlantic]
- Donald Trump is very sad he hasn’t seen Mike Pence in more than a week. [Politico]
- This man who downplayed the pandemic until he himself got covid-19 and who likely transmitted it to his wife is very confident that his wife, who is currently hooked up to a ventilator, would forgive him. [NBC News]
- I regret to inform you that Chris Cillizza remains employed. [CNN]