As I read CNN’s Chris Cillizza’s condemnation of Fox News‘ Trish Regan’s rant concerning the coronavirus being a hoax meant to injure President Trump, it seemed to me this was more than a simple defense of President Trump. But, first, Regan’s paranoid rant:
You gotta watch this, I mean……..you just gotta watch pic.twitter.com/x2ZsayVrmv
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 10, 2020
Yeah. I couldn’t finish it. Hell, I could barely start it. I have an allergy to such deliberate stupidity.
But it seems to me that this is more than a defense of an incompetent President. This is really about normalizing the bad behaviors of the President and his party, an attempt to legitimize a fundamentally third-rate approach to governance and society. Rather than admit that this is not a good President, they scream about it all being a hoax meant to hurt the President.
Because America’s been trained to love the victims of shadowy, hateful forces, without pausing for critical thoughts.
The truth of the matter is that, per usual, Congress is offering criticisms of the President’s efforts, even as it works on its own offerings. This has happened practically since day 1, and it is a good thing.
Let me repeat that. It is a good thing to offer criticism.
Sure, they have to be earnest and fair, which is more than can be said for some such criticisms from any Congress you’d care to name; there’s always some extremist bomb-thrower who wants to make points with the extremists back home. Left, right, top, bottom, they always exist.
But hardly anything improves without critique, whether internal or external. And with Trump reportedly firing the team that would have been in charge of the response, he makes an easy target for gentle correction.
Unfortunately for him, Trumps and their cult never makes mistakes, do they? So he’s stuck. He’s stuck having to defend a bone-headed decision, and he’s elected to with As a businessman … and I don’t even have to finish up that quote, do I? It implicitly and completely indicts him as not understanding his job – and not being interested in finding out what it might entail, because it’ll just make him look worse.
So what is our part in this drama? To understand what’s going on behind such rancid dramas as Regan’s, and call it what it is.
