Top journalists' startling lack of skill!

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2020

Alcindor, Jiang crash and burn: "How could I be losing to this guy?"

Long ago, Michael Dukakis, played by Jon Lovitz, uttered a version of that lament during a skit on Saturday Night Live. "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy," Lovitz specifically said.

That puzzlement comes to mind when we consider the way our high-end reporters get their clocks cleaned by Donald J. Trump. It happens day after day in his televised prime-time "briefings."

Today, we'll focus on two recent attempts to challenge Trump made by two high-end reporters. We refer to Weijia Jiang of CBS News and Yamiche Alcindor of the PBS NewsHour.

Jiang and Alcindor attempted to question and challenge Trump concerning his crazy past statements about the coronavirus. More specifically, they questioned Trump about the ways he downplayed the threat of the virus all through February and into the middle of March.

Jiang attempted to question Trump at last Sunday's briefing. The next day, Alcindor gave it a try. Her original question went like this:

ALCINDOR (4/20/20): [My] second question is about your language and how you approached the coronavirus at the beginning.

I interviewed someone who says that his family got sick—they went to a funeral in mid-March, and they said mainly because the president wasn’t taking it seriously. He said, “If the president had had a mask on, if he was saying that we should stay home, then I would have stayed home. Instead, I have family members—"

But he said his family members were sick and because they were listening to you. Do you feel like or are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?

In theory, this was a rather hard-hitting question. Alcindor was asking if the commander felt that some people had become sick—presumably, if he felt that some people had died—because of the crazy things he said all the way through mid-March.

In theory, this was a hard-hitting question. It also represents a challenge Alcindor shouldn't have been able to lose.

As we noted earlier this week, Trump said a million crazy things all through February and then on into March. How batshit crazy was this man's behavior? Here are some leading howlers:

February 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 25: "You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are...getting better. They’re all getting better."

February 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 6: "[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."

March 10: "We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Presumably, those are the kinds of crazy statements Alcindor's source had been talking about. Quite literally, this deeply disordered, delusional man had been invoking the concept of miracles to wish the virus away.

We had fifteen people with the virus, he said. Within days, that would be close to zero. As of today, of course, more than 46,000 people have died—and that's just the official count.

Has any major public official ever made a crazier bunch of statements? Alcindor had every reason to wonder how and why an American president could ever have said such things. That said:

It's astounding to think that none of the journalists in our endless "daily briefings" had ever managed to nail Trump down concerning these crazy remarks. And as with Dukakis, so too here:

With examples like those to present to Trump, how could Alcindor fail? Putting that another way, how could our upper-end journalists possibly be losing to this guy?

If you want to see how they manage to lose, just examine the transcript of Alcindor's exchange with Trump that day. Needless to say, he immediately began praising himself for his "travel ban" with China. This is the way her narcissistic/sociopathic "answer" began:

TRUMP (continuing directly): And a lot of people love Trump, right? A lot of people love me. You see them all the time, right? I guess I’m here for a reason, you know. To the best of my knowledge, I won, and I think we’re going to win again. I think we’re going to win in a landslide.

But just so you understand, you’re talking about March, right? And yet—

[INAUDIBLE CROSSTALK]

Excuse me, excuse me. I know, I understand. And yet in January, a certain date, you know the date better than I do, we put on a ban of China where China can’t come in, and before March we put on a ban in Europe where Europe can’t come in. So how could you say I wasn’t taking it seriously?

After Trump had imposed his "ban," how could anyone possibly have thought that he wasn't talking the virus seriously?

The answer to that is blindingly obvious. The answer goes something like this:

February 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 6: "[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."

Duh! That's why people might have thought that they weren't being warned!

Like a miracle, the virus would disappear. As of February 26, we had a total of fifteen cases, and it would soon be close to zero.

That's how a person might have thought that Trump wasn't taking the virus seriously. On the basis of statements like those, people who believe in Trump went out and got themselves sick and killed. And that, of course, is the very premise with which Alcindor began her question.

But good God! As you can see from the transcript, Alcindor didn't cite any of those crazy statements when Trump challenged her basic premise. Instead, when she got a chance to follow up on her original question, you'll see that she moved on to this:

ALCINDOR: You held rallies in February and in March. And there are some American—

TRUMP: Oh, I don’t know about rallies. I really don’t know about rallies. I know one thing [CROSSTALK], I haven’t left the White House in months, except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship, The Comfort—

ALCINDOR: You held a rally in March.

TRUMP: I don’t know. Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry. I held a rally. Did I hold the rally? Let me tell you. In January when I did this, you had virtually no cases and no deaths, and yet I put [the ban] on.

When Alcindor got a chance to support of her original point, she didn't confront Trump with the crazy array of things he had said. Instead, she switched her field. He's held a rally in March!

The day before, in last Sunday's session, Jiang had posed a similar question to Trump. Trump had been complaining that the World Health Organization hadn't raised an alarm about the virus soon enough. Despite being interrupted several times by Trump, Jiang managed to voice this initial question:

JIANG (4/19/20): I have a question about something you said on Thursday, which is that you were angry because information about the virus should have been told to us earlier and a lot sooner. People knew it was happening, and people did not want to talk about it.

Many Americans are saying the exact same thing about you, that you should’ve warned them the virus was spreading like wildfire through the month of February instead of holding rallies with thousands of people. Why did you wait so long—

[Interruptions]

And why did you not have social distancing until March 16th?

You'll note that Jiang has already posed several different things. She started out saying that he should have warned the public sooner. But as he voiced her several complaints, she too never cited the lunatic things he had said.

Like Alcindor, Jiang got blown off course by Trump's distractions and insults. Neither scribe confronted Trump with his crazy statements.

Trump has been holding his daily prime-time gong-shows for an eternity now. Amazingly, none of our upper-end journalists have ever managed to confront him with the crazy things he said during February and on into mid-March.

On at least two occasions, he invoked the concept of the miraculous to wish the virus away. On another occasion, he said we'd soon have almost no cases. Today, the official count of confirmed cases has moved past 800,000.

Day after day, the somnolent scribes of the upper-end press sit inside the daily briefings and snore through Trump's array of crazy misstatements and blatant non sequiturs. None has ever shown the moxie to confront him about these crazy claims—and to insist that he provide an explanation for the ridiculous things he said.

The children are simply too polite to engage in such behavior. Even when two journalists tried to challenge Trump on this horrible record, they quickly became so distracted that they didn't even confront this disordered man with his most famous crazy examples.

Jiang and Alcindor were playing a winning hand when they asked Trump about the crazy things he had said. But Trump responded with insults and non sequiturs, and the pair of high-end journalists were quickly blown off course.

As a group, our journalists accept the insults and they come back for more. In their underwhelming hands, these Q-and-As quickly turn into a daily TV show, No Distraction Left Behind.

It's astounding to watch these silent lambs refusing to serve the nation. Even when they try to serve, the don't know how to win.

Jiang and Alcindor are surely very nice people. Lawrence O'Donnell even hailed Alcindor as "intrepid."

Our scribes have lovely courtesy skills. But oh what kind of journalism is this, which goes from hopeless to worse?

Tomorrow: What should be done—a list

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE: Quoted correctly, but paraphrased wrong!

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2020

Trump, Post swap mistakes: The first fifteen minutes of yesterday's daily briefing was deeply painful to watch.

It started with a specific claim lodged by President Trump. According to Trump, Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, had been "totally misquoted" by the Washington Post in this Tuesday news report.

As Trump interrupted various parties and spoke for everyone else, Redfield was marched onto the stage to explain what he'd actually said. At one point, he specifically said that he hadn't been misquoted by the Post.

As Redfield stumbled a bit under further questioning, Trump motioned Dr. Birx to the stage to speak in Redfield's place. While there, she delivered the latest of her air-filled, distracting orations. Trump's invitation to Birx had followed this awkward question for Redfield:

REPORTER (4/22/20): Why did you retweet the article if it was inaccurate, Doctor? Why did you retweet it?

TRUMP: You weren’t called.

Dr. Redfield had indeed retweeted the article in question. Instead of letting Redfield answer, Trump scolded the reporter for asking. He then called Birx to the stage, sitting Redfield down.

A nation whose discourse works this way is a nation destined to fail. Anthropologists have been telling us this for the past several years.

This opening fifteen minute scrum devolved into a more general trashing of the press by an irate commander-in-chief. The whole thing ended with a self-pitying, self-glorifying monologue by the commander.

Warning! Misstatements included:

TRUMP: You know, at one time, all [the press] talked about was ventilators, because you didn't think it was possible for me to solve that problem. And I solved it and nobody can believe it. I just spoke to world leaders today who desperately need ventilators. They said, "The job you've done"—and we're sending 500 to Mexico, then another 500 to France. We're sending some to Spain. We're sending some to Italy. They're being made by the thousands.

And world leaders—I spoke to Prime Minister— I mean, I went through a lot of different calls today, I won't even tell you, I can give you a list if you want. But I went through a lot of calls to a lot of leaders. Spoke with Pakistan. They would like to have some ventilators. We're going to get them some ventilators. But they all said to me one thing: "It was incredible that you solved the ventilator problem," because that was a big problem.

The testing problem, we've done more than any other nation in the world. Go a step further. If you added up the testing of every nation in the world, put them together, we've done substantially more than that. You people aren't satisfied.

So let's say we had 350 million people in the United States, all right? Let's say. And if we gave every one of those people a test 10 times, so we give 350 [million] people a test 10 times, the fake news media would say, "Where's the 11th time? He didn't do his job. Trump didn't do his job." Because you have a lot of bad reporting out there, it's very sad. And it's so bad—

JONATHAN KARL: That's just not true! That's not true.

TRUMP: You're one of the leaders of the bad reporting.

KARL: No, that's not true.

TRUMP: Let's get onto another subject. I wanted that to be cleared up. If you want, we can get onto it later, but I want the vice president to speak...

This led to one of the excruciating soliloquies which have become the trademark of Vice President Pence, delivered in the Reagan persona he's been practicing in front of mirrors since he was five years old. During the later Q-and-A, reporters didn't direct a single question to Redfield.

The commander's self-pity knows no bounds. His delusions about his own manifest greatness seem to be clinical. It's a dangerous state of affairs.

In this case, Trump's claim about what the press would say if he tested everyone ten separate times triggered a very unusual moment. As Trump made his wild prediction, a leading journalist hotly declared that his statement was "just not true."

Our press corps displays an endless capacity to slumber through the commander's endless daily misstatements. Yesterday, in a very rare moment, Jonathan Karl seemed to be genuinely offended by what Trump had said—offended on behalf of the truth.

At any rate, Trump's behavior during the fifteen minutes provided a master class is public dysfunction. He bullied and made wild misstatements. He tried to speak for everyone else. He engaged in mammoth, inaccurate acts of self-praise. He engaged in ludicrous acts of self-pity.

In fairness, though, another fact must be stated today. In the news report under review, the Washington Post actually did misrepresent—embellish—what Redfield apparently told them.

(No tape of the interview has been made public.)

There is no sign that Redfield was actually misquoted by the Post. But, quite plainly, the Washington Post misparaphrased what Redfield had said.

In what ways did the Post misparaphrase Redfield—embellish what he actually said? They did so right in their opening paragraph, and in their fiery headline.

This is how Lena Sun's report began, current headline included:

SUN (4/22/20): CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating

Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.

“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”

In paragraph 2, you see the direct quotation which Redfield said was accurate. This is what, by all accounts, Redfield actually said:

"There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through."

In that direct quotation, Redfield refers to a possibility that the second wave of the virus will be "more difficult" than the current first wave. But right there in her opening paragraph, Sun embellished that statement in two separate ways.

In her opening paragraph, Sun has Redfield saying that the second wave will be more difficult. In that embellshment, Sun has moved from the statement of a possibility to a flat prediction.

Also this! According to Sun's paraphrase, the second wave won't simply be "more difficult." In Sun's inaccurate paraphrase, it will be "far more dire."

Sun's paraphrase embellishes Redfield's quoted statement in two separate ways. It transforms a statement of mere possibility into a flat prediction. It turns the claim that the second wave may be "more difficult" into the statement that it will be "far more dire."

The headline took Sun's paraphrase and embellished it a bit further. In the headline, a second wave which may be "more difficult" has now become "more devastating." Meanwhile, the headline presents this as "a likelihood," not as a "possibility."

That is plainly underskilled journalism; it's underskilled all the way down. By all accounts, Sun accurately quoted Redfield in paragraph 2—but she misparaphrased what he said right there in paragraph 1!

Redfield wasn't misquoted by the Post, but he was misparaphrased. Amazingly, Trump captured the essence of this distinction as part of his opening rant—an opening rant which was clogged with other misstatements.

As he ranted and misstated, Trump actually made a reasonable distinction. One minute into yesterday's session, this is how his complaint began:

TRUMP: I do want to mention a man who’s done a very good job for us. Dr. Robert Redfield was totally misquoted in the media on a statement about the fall season and the virus, totally misquoted. I spoke to him and he said it was ridiculous.

He was talking about the flu and corona coming together at the same time and corona could be just some little flare-ups that we’ll take care of. We’re going to knock it out. We’ll knock it out fast.

But that’s what he was referring to, coming together at the same time. And I think rather than waiting, I’d ask Dr. Redfield to come up and say a couple of words just to straighten that out, because he didn’t say it was a big explosion.

The headline in The Washington Post was totally inaccurate. The statement wasn’t bad in the Post, but the headline was ridiculous, which is, as I say, that’s fake news and CNN is fake news like crazy, and they had just totally the wrong story, which they knew.

As far as anyone can say, Redfield wasn't "totally misquoted." Indeed, in a narrow, technical sense, there is no sign that he was misquoted at all.

Beyond that, he never spoke about "some little flare-up." Also, the Post never quoted him saying that the second wave would be "a big explosion." These are the sorts of embellishments which litter Trump's daily rants.

As usual, Trump's complaint, right from the start, featured his characteristic misstatements. But he managed to get one basic point right:

In Trump's assessment, the quoted statement wasn't wrong in the body of the Post's report. The problem came with the headline.

In fact, the problem began in paragraph 1, but Trump was making a reasonable distinction. Inevitably, fifteen minutes of loudmouth nonsense followed, as now happens every evening as the nation's cable channels spend hours airing the prime-time rantings of a deeply disordered man.

That said, we must also say this:

Disordered though President Trump may be, the Washington Post actually did mischaracterize what Redfield was quoted saying. His quoted statement was embellished in two different ways—and the embellishments appeared in the headline, where the most eyes would see them.

Long ago and far away, we frequently spoke about the logic of paraphrase. "The power to paraphrase is the power to spin," we said again and again.

At the time, we were speaking about Campaign 2000, a White House election which plainly turned on twenty months of fanciful paraphrase—relentless embellishments engineered and super-spread by the upper-end mainstream press.

Twenty years later, our nation's upper-end journalists still haven't mastered this basic skill. Nor have they developed the willingness to admit to such mistakes when they occur.

Last evening, Sun appeared on CNN; she indicated that her report had been beyond reproach. Later, the Post's Ashley Parker appeared with Brian Williams, where she and a panel of guild members—including the New York Times' Peter Baker—joined Williams in pretending that there had been nothing wrong with the Post's report.

We were disappointed to see Parker do that. We've come to admire her cogency over the past few years as we've watched her many appearances on MSNBC panel shows.

Last night, Parker fell in line behind her newspaper, and behind the guild. This morning, in a front-page report, she fails to acknowledge the fact that Sun's report did in fact mischaracterize what Redfield was quoted saying.

Readers, a person can be misparaphrased even as he's being accurately quoted! Beyond that, a misparaphrase can mislead and misinform a reader just as a misquotation can.

In recent months, we've noted the fact that our great logicians would never stoop to the level of exploring the logic of sensible paraphrase as part of "daily logic." With yesterday's melee, we all see, for the ten millionth time, where we the people are left by this endless refusal to serve.

Yesterday's first fifteen minutes was an embarrassing mess. Your lizard brain is going to urge you to assume that only Trump could possibly have been wrong in the matter at issue.

As always, the commander was wildly, crazily wrong in a wide array of ways. But you should consider telling your lizard that the Post had misperformed too.

Trump screamed and yelled as he always does. He frequently misstated.

He donned his Mussolini mask. He bullied, and he spoke for others. He called on Birx for one of her patented distractions.

But just as a matter of fact, the Washington Post did in fact misparaphrase what Dr. Redfield said. Even at the highest end, our journalists' skills are amazingly limited, and as we've seen for twenty-two years, they don't acknowledge mistakes.

(Given the limited state of their skills, they may not even realize that a mistake had been made.)

The basic skills of our upper-end journalists are amazingly limited. This afternoon, we'll discuss the way two high-end journalists recently crashed and burned as they tried to question Trump about his past crazy statements.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Our upper-end journalists lack basic skills.

Tomorrow, we'll tell you what should be done. Yesterday, the president ranted and raved at length once again as an elite looked on.

This afternoon: How to bungle an obvious question

Tomorrow: What's to be done?

Trump pictures testing at tattoo parlors!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020

The shape of the problem we face: In what ways should major news orgs cover Mister Trump's daily TV programs?

On Friday, well offer a list of ideas. But one thing is already clear:

The sheer stupidity of these sessions is their defining characteristic.

Consider what happened yesterday when one reporter asked about Governor Kemp's recent odd decision in Georgia. To his credit, the reporter did two things which very few others do:

After an endless monologue by Trump, he butted in to ask a follow-up question. And when he did, he said he wanted to direct his question to Dr. Birx!

The magnanimous president granted Birx permission to talk. But as he did, the cluelessness already seemed to be visible:

REPORTER (4/21/20): If I might just—pardon me. Hair salons, nail salons, tattoo parlors. Dr. Birx, can you weigh in on this? Because the people of Atlanta want to hear from you as well, as much as they want to hear from their governor and from you, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Yeah, I think—I think it’s fine.

REPORTER: What, what about—how do you success—safely have hair salons and nail salons and tattoo parlors where people apparently—

TRUMP: Where is that? Where is that?

REPORTER: This is in Georgia. —where people have to inherently be close together.

Even after granting Dr. Birx permission to speak, Trump kept interrupting. In this case, he seemed to reveal the fact that he didn't even know what state was being discussed.

At any rate, how do you safely open hair salons and tattoo parlors—places where people inherently have to be close together? The reporter had asked an obvious question.

In response, Dr. Birx said people can be very creative. After that peculiar remark, Trump chimed in with this:

TRUMP: And it also depends—as an example that you just gave—are they doing testing before they go in? We have to find that out. That’s why I’m speaking to the governor in a little while, and I’ll be asking him those questions.

Will the tattoo parlors be testing people for coronavirus before they're allowed to enter? In Trump's world, Georgia's tattoo parlor owners will perhaps have access to tests, in a country where doctors often can't test the people they'd like to test.

This kind of nonsense emerges each day from our commander-in-chief. How should big newspapers handle this fact?

On Friday, a possible answer to that obvious question will be part of our list.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE: Return of the silence of two groups of lambs!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020

O'Donnell mentions just one: At 10:05 PM Eastern, last night, Lawrence O'Donnell landed a direct hit on Deborah Birx.

In our view, his attack on Dr. Birx was constructive and perhaps a bit overdue. O'Donnell may have overstated a bit, but it seems to us that his critique takes us in a constructive direction.

O'Donnell was attacking the silence of one group of lambs—even though, at yesterday's televised White House briefing, there were two groups of silent enablers present in the room.

O'Donnell went after "the Trump team." Below, we'll mention the journalists.

O'Donnell's criticism of Dr. Birx concerns the recent peculiar decision by Georgia governor Brian Kemp. He has given permission for tattoo parlors to open in Georgia—also, barbershops and massage parlors, and bowling alleys too.

These entities have been cleared to open, even though the state of Georgia shows no sign of getting the coronavirus under control. Nor has the state come close to satisfying the guidelines for (very limited) Phase One reopening, as announced by Trump late last week.

As O'Donnell noted, Georgians will now be able to get a tattoo, then head to the bowling alley. He then launched his attack on Birx. Note the key words "once again:"

O'DONNELL (4/21/20): Dr. Deborah Birx was asked about this at the White House briefing today and, once again, Dr. Birx gave the kind of answer that a Republican Party lawyer would give, an answer designed to protect any Republican office holder with a bad idea.

Dr. Birx actually said that it's perfectly OK to open these businesses as long as you can maintain social distancing inside those businesses. Social distancing for a massage. Social distancing for a tattoo. Social distancing six feet away for a haircut!

Dr. Birx actually pretended that all those things were possible:

BIRX (videotape): If there’s a way that people can social distance and do those things, then they can do those things. I don’t know how, but people are very creative.

O'DONNELL: That is a purely Trumpian answer. Dr. Birx is saying that someone can cut your hair from six feet away.

Can someone cut your hair from six feet away? Edward Scissorhands maybe!

At any rate, O'Donnell's paraphrase of Dr. Birx may have been slightly overstated. In our view, it wasn't overstated by much—and it moves the discussion in the right direction.

For ourselves, we've found Birx's performances at these prime-time sessions increasingly maddening. She's become a master at performative bafflegab—at meandering, technocratic orations which rarely seem to address the matter at hand in a way TV viewers and high-end journalists are likely to understand.

Unexplained slides flash by at warp speed as Dr. Birx pretends to address whatever topic may be at hand. But in these performances, Birx conveys the impression that various actions by Donald J. Trump are supported by scientific authority.

Last night, O'Donnell continued his critique of Birx after playing tape of Donald J. Trump himself. The tape showed Trump saying that demonstrators have been practicing social distancing at their LIBERATE MICHIGAN protests.

Trump said they seemed to be social distancing—plus, they had a lot of American flags! O'Donnell responded with this attack. Note the key word "her:"

O'DONNELL: If there was a serious public health official in that White House briefing today with the president, she would have raised her voice and said something like:

"I have seen the pictures of those protesters and they are not social distancing. And they are all risking their own lives by doing what they're doing and they are risking the lives of other people in their communities—their neighbors and their families, who they might come in contact with after being in the thick of one of those reckless and dangerous demonstrations."

But everyone in that room working on the Trump team knows that being a Trump team member requires keeping their own safe distance from a truth like that.

Was O'Donnell being fair? He said that Birx should have "raised her voice" at yesterday's session and openly contradicted the commander-in-chief. Does that advice make sense?

Many observers have assumed that Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci (he was absent again yesterday) have avoided speaking freely and clearly in service to the greater good. In theory, such reticence may make sense—but it has seemed to us that Birx has drifted increasingly far in this "Trumpian" direction.

At any rate, O'Donnell savaged the silence of one group of lambs in that room yesterday. He savaged the silence of the lambs serving "on the Trump team."

Trump team members refuse to speak up, O'Donnell said. But as he did, he failed to mention the silence of a second group who pleasantly sat in that room.

We refer to the various lambs of the upper-end press corps. Theoretically, they'd been assembled in that room to question Commander Trump.

In recent days, several upper-end journalists actually had aggressively tried to challenge President Trump.

As we told you yesterday, they'd tried—and they had failed. In the process, they were insulted by President Trump—savaged for their failed attempts to serve.

Yesterday, the lambs were back. We refer to those in the upper-end press, not those who serve on the Trump team.

Obvious questions went unasked; obvious follow-ups didn't occur. Most strikingly, Trump wasn't pushed about Kemp's weird decrees, which fly in the face of the very guidelines Trump announced late last week.

The lambs in the press corps behaved themselves, as did the lambs on Trump's team. You can imagine an excuse for the silence of Birx. We can't say the same for the journalists.

For liberals, it's easy to see the weird misconduct and mental disorder of President Donald J. Trump. It may be harder to recognize the abject failures—the failures and the refusals to serve—of our upper-end journalists, who may seem to be "on our side."

Yesterday, this second group of lambs displayed a remarkable silence. In recent days, several others had failed to serve through their remarkable lack of even the most basic skills.

Tomorrow, we'll return to Yamiche Alcindor and Weijia Jiang as they try to challenge the commander in chief concerning an obvious point. On successive days, they tried to ask Trump an obvious question—they tried, and in each case they failed.

Tomorrow, we'll peruse the remarkable lack of skill which doomed their attempts to serve. On Friday, we'll offer a list of ways our upper-end journalists and upper-end news orgs should serve in the face of the virus itself, and in the face of these ridiculous prime-time "briefings."

"What's to be done?" So the other Vladimir once quite thoughtfully asked.

What should the upper-end press corps be doing? On Friday, we'll offer a list.

Tomorrow: In search of the most basic skills

A correction: Yesterday, we said that Yamiche Alcindor works for the New York Times.

Alcindor seems like a very nice person. She moved from the Times to the PBS NewsHour way back in the faraway past.

How silly do Donald Trump's briefings get?

TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020

As triggered by OAN: How silly do President Donald J. Trump's daily TV shows get?

It's just another way of asking how silly our discourse is. The Q-and-A which ended last night's briefing helps us answer our question.

Once again, the commander-in-chief fled to the welcoming arms of the ladies of the crackpot site, OAN. He then talked and talked and talked and talked, and then he ended the session.

Yesterday, we noted the ridiculous question Trump received at Sunday's briefing from OAN's Jenn Pellegrino. Believe it or not, that question went like this:

PELLEGRINO (4/19/20): Thank you, Mr. President. The CDC has finally admitted to profound failures with testing kits from the beginning of the outbreak. Is this a function of lax oversight from the Obama-Biden administration?

Given the fact that this was OAN, this was clearly intended as a way for Trump to bash Obama/Biden. The CDC's errors in 2020 were supposed to be blamed on them!

Even Trump didn't attempt to go there. Yesterday, though, after his tussle with Yamiche Alexander, he threw to OAN once again.

This time, he threw to Chanel Rion for the day's final question. Her "question" went like this:

TRUMP (4/20/20): Please.

RION: Mr. President, thank you, Chanel Rion with One America News.

TRUMP: Please. Go ahead.

RION: Going back to the topic of friendship and bipartisanship, Americans—with the exception of Pelosi, Schumer and even Romney—Americans have seen an unprecedented chapter of bipartisanship and cooperation on the political landscape. On a personal note, what has been the most significant signal that your relationship with Democrats below the leadership level have changed for the good of America?

The softball floated over the plate and the president hit it hard. Believe it or not, he orated for a full eight minutes and 30 seconds, largely concerning his personal greatness and the ways he's been mistreated.

Pelosi had been "very nasty." Schumer "just did what he was supposed to do and he didn’t do very well with it."

The media "foments a lot of anger...I’ll be asked a tremendously hostile question from somebody, and then I’ll answer it in a hostile way, which is appropriate. Otherwise you look foolish."

You can watch the full filibuster at the end of this White House videotape. More than eight minutes after throwing to OAN, the rambling commander in chief ended the session like this:

TRUMP: But I just say this. If we would have done that, we would’ve lost anywhere from a million to more than two million people. Now, with all of the death that we’ve seen at 50 or 60,000 people heading toward, right now it’s at 40, but 50 or 60,000 people, probably over 50 [INAUDIBLE], but that’s with our guard up! If we took our guard down and just said, “Okay, we’re just going to keep this open,” we would have lost millions of people.

Can you imagine? Look how bad it looks now when you look at the bodies, when you look at Hart Island in New York where they have the mass grave, and all of the things that you see, can you imagine if we had the guard down, if we didn’t do anything and we just said, “Let’s ride it out?” It would not have been sustainable in any way. It would have been an atrocity.

So we’ve done the right thing. We’ve really done the right thing. And the people that have worked so hard and dangerously, I’ll tell you again, I say it, but I watched those doctors and nurses and medical people running into those hospitals, and they don’t even have that gear on. Forget about gear, whether it’s great gear or not, and we’re bringing in the best gear in the world, but they’re running in with open everything.

I mean, the job, they're like warriors, the job they’re doing. But if we didn’t do the moves that we made, you would have had a million, a million and a half, 2 million people dead. So multiply that times 50, you’re talking about you would’ve had 10 to 20 to 25 times more people dead than all of the people that we’ve been watching. That’s not acceptable. The 50,000 is not acceptable. It’s so horrible. But can you imagine multiplying that out by 20 or more? It’s not acceptable.

So it’s a very good question. I appreciate it. We’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll see you tomorrow.

PENCE: Thanks, everybody.

For a full eight minutes and 30 seconds, the rambling, semi-coherent commander had explored an array of his favorite topics.

This is aired nightly, in prime time. Such is the state of our discourse.

A final observation: Whoever sold Trump on this Civil War monologue ought to be frogmarched away:

TRUMP: You know, maybe we could have just gone right through. I was somebody that would have loved to have done that, but it wouldn’t have been sustainable. You can’t lose a million people. That’s almost double what we lost in the Civil War.

I use that as a guide, Civil War, 600,000 people died. So it’s not sustainable.

But it could have been much more than a million people. I mean if you took a number and cut it in half and half and in half again, you’d end up at 500,000 people, okay, if you want to make a very conservative guesstimate. 500,000 people is not acceptable. Is that a correct sort of an analogy?

So I mean I see it all the time. My friends of mine, people that I have great respect for. Well we could have done this, we could have done, and remember this, when we say 50 and they compare 50 to the 35 of the flu, because it’s averaged 35, 36,000 over a 10 year period. It’s a lot. Who would think that?

That too comes from yesterday's closing oration. We'll say it again:

Whoever sold Trump on that "Civil War cutting-it-in-half" monologue ought to be frogmarched away.

Plus, is this person OK?

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE: Alcindor, Jiang try to question Trump!

TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020

Top journalists try and they fail: During last evening's televised "daily briefing," the New York Times' Yamiche Alcindor attempted to question President Donald J. Trump.

She tried to question Trump, and she failed. The abject lack of skill she displayed might serve as an anthropology lesson.

Alcindor tried, and she failed. Despite this fact, Lawrence O'Donnell delivered a tribute to Alcindor early in last evening's Last Word program:

O'DONNELL (4/20/20): Today, the intrepid Yamiche Alcindor asked Donald Trump a simple question: Is he concerned? Concerned about people who listen to him, and believe him, and then get sick.

It was a simple question. But the answer could not possibly have been more perverse.

From there, O'Donnell played tape of the question Alcindor had asked. He included the start of Trump's long and rambling—and successfully evasive—non-answer answer.

Below, you see Alcindor's question, along with the start of Trump's evasive non-reply. This is the part of the more than four-minute exchange which O'Donnell aired:

ALCINDOR: That second question [I want to ask] is about your language and how you approached the coronavirus at the beginning.

I interviewed someone who says that his family got sick—they went to a funeral in mid-March, and they said mainly because the president wasn’t taking it seriously. He said, “If the president had had a mask on, if he was saying that we should stay home, then I would have stayed home. Instead, I have family members—"

But he said his family members were sick and because they were listening to you. Do you feel like or are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?

TRUMP: And a lot of people love Trump, right? A lot of people love me. You see them all the time, right? I guess I’m here for a reason, you know. To the best of my knowledge, I won, and I think we’re going to win again. I think we’re going to win in a landslide...

Trump's long, rambling, evasive answer rambled on from there. Predictably, he quickly began discussing his heroic action in instituting restrictions on travel from China and Europe—limited restrictions which he constantly describes as "bans."

The China "travel ban" was announced on January 31, went into effect on February 2. Trump always discusses this "travel ban" when he's challenged about the crazy things he said in February and in the first weeks of March.

Trump's position seems to be this: Because he'd issued the "travel ban," it should have been obvious to everyone that he was taking the coronavirus very seriously. To give you the flavor of what we mean, here is a longer chunk of the way he started last night:

TRUMP: And a lot of people love Trump, right? A lot of people love me. You see them all the time, right? I guess I’m here for a reason, you know. To the best of my knowledge, I won, and I think we’re going to win again. I think we’re going to win in a landslide. But just so you understand, you’re talking about March, right? And yet—

[INAUDIBLE CROSSTALK]

Excuse me, excuse me. I know, I understand. And yet in January, a certain date, you know the date better than I do, we put on a ban of China where China can’t come in, and before March we put on a ban in Europe where Europe can’t come in. So how could you say I wasn’t taking it seriously?

He'd put on a ban of China in January! How could Alcindor possibly say he wasn't taking it seriously?

You'd almost think that everyone would know how to answer that question. The answer involves the crazy statements Trump made in February and then in March, long after he'd issued his "ban."

You'd think that every living human would know how to answer Trump's question! As an example of what we mean, John King said this on CNN moments after last night's "briefing" ended:

KING: If the Trump administration gets to write the history of 2020, it will erase February and half of March. That's what you get when you listen to these briefings.

Yes, the president did ban that travel from China. But go through February: "We have no problem with testing." "It's going to quickly go away." "We're at 15 cases, it will soon be down to zero."

The president refuses to acknowledge that, yes, he took one bold step early on, but then he didn't do a lot of other things.

How could anyone possibly say that Trump wasn't taking it seriously? You could say it because of the crazy things he proceeded to say as the days and weeks rolled on.

The list of Trump's statements and tweets includes such iconic groaners as these:

A few of the president's groaners:

February 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 25: "You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are...getting better. They’re all getting better."

February 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 2: "We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they're going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon.”

March 6: “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.”

March 6: "[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."

March 9: "So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on."

March 10: "We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Thousands of people do die of the flu every year. But by the end of March, Trump had executed a giant flip. He said that if we don't proceed to shut things down, the coronavirus could take as many as 2.2 million American lives this year.

Yesterday, Trump asked Alcindor a simple question. After he'd instituted his heroic travel "bans," how could anyone say he wasn't taking this matter seriously?

You'd think that anyone would know how to answer that question. But when Alcindor asked a follow-up question, she didn't cite any of Trump's iconic crazy statements. The very same breakdown had occurred at Monday's briefing, when Weijia Jiang of CBS attempted to challenge Trump on this very same point.

Last night, O'Donnell called Alcindor "intrepid." As he continued, he called Trump a sociopath.

He may well be right about Trump, but we'd describe Alcindor in a different way. We assume that she's a very nice person—but we'd call yesterday's performance "incompetent." We'd have to say that she seemed "unskilled," stunningly "unprepared."

It's easy for liberals to see the way Trump evades, insults, misstates. It's much harder for liberals to see the way our high-end press corps fails.

We think those people are on our side. We think they're being very brave. We see them called "intrepid."

We may not be able to see their remarkable lack of elementary skill. We'll discuss these upper-end failures over the next few days.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what happened when Alcindor and Jiang tried to question Trump on this blindingly obvious point. By Thursday or Friday, we'll offer a list of things which ought to be done by our upper-end news orgs as these daily prime-time gong-shows devour the nation's IQ.

Tomorrow, we'll evaluate the competence of the high-end journalists who sit inside that briefing room. Jiang represents CBS; Alcindor is from the New York Times.

They attempted to question Donald J. Trump. It's truly amazing to take a look at how badly they failed.

Tomorrow: The follow-up questions not asked

The foolishness and the president's fury!

MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2020

Two obvious questions remain: Yesterday was a day of foolishness, and perhaps a day of poorly framed questions. More on that second point tomorrow, or at least so we expect.

It was also a day of presidential fury. Journalists were interrupted, attacked and insulted. Also, consider one striking question and answer. The question came out of the blue:

REPORTER (4/19/20): Mr. President, have you thought any more about pardoning Paul Manafort or Roger Stone so they’re not exposed to coronavirus in jail?

That question came pretty much out of the blue. Other questions, achieved and attempted, were more significant yesterday, but none produced more fury or a more startling response:

TRUMP (continuing directly): Well, I’ll just tell you this: Roger Stone was treated very unfairly. Paul Manafort, the black book turned out to be a fraud. We learned that out during the various last number of weeks and months. They had a black book that came out of Ukraine. It turned out to be a fraud. It turned out to be a fraud. They convicted a man; it turned out to be a fraud.

General Flynn was a highly respected person, and it turned out to be a scam on him. The FBI said he didn’t lie. And Mueller’s people wanted him to go to jail. Okay?

So what am I going to do? You’ll find out what I’m going do. I’m not going to say what I’m going to do.

But I will tell you, the whole thing turned out to be a scam, and it turned out to be a disgrace to our country, and it was a takedown of a duly elected president. And these people suffered greatly.

General Flynn—I mean, what they did to him! And even the FBI said—and they had some—and nobody bigger fan of the FBI than me, at the level of the people that really matter. But the top of the FBI was scum.

And what they did to General Flynn—and you know it, and everybody knows it—was a disgrace. He was in the service for over 30 years. He ends up being a general and respected. Respected! And almost his first day in office, they come in with papers; they want to investigate him. Never happened before. And now the tables are turned. Investigate the investigators, I guess.

These were crooked people. These are bad people. These are very dangerous people. You know what they are though? They’re scum. They’re human scum.

All right. Do you want to have one in the back? Please.

Stone was only treated unfairly. But when it comes to Manafort and Flynn, the investigations and prosecutions were a scam, a fraud and a disgrace. The probes were conducted by crooked people—more specifically, by human scum.

The commander's fury, and his invective, were striking even for him. That said, a pair of fairly obvious questions remain to be explored.

According to the White House transcript, the reporter actually asked one of these questions midway through, though the commander talked over her so instantly that you couldn't hear what she said.

Those unanswered, obvious remaining question go like this:

If those convictions were fraudulent, why haven't Manafort and Flynn been pardoned? Also, if the investigations and prosecutions were scams conducted by human scum, who haven't the "crooked people" who behaved in this way been charged with crimes—indicted?

The original question was less significant than various other questions. That said, it opened a window into the president's fury.

It also left two obvious questions unanswered. That said, the history of these daily sessions is clear:

No one will ask the obvious questions during today's prime-time session. These events have produced a history of spotless minds; every day, the high-end reporters start the world anew.

For the record, one more question goes unasked and unanswered. Is something perhaps a little bit wrong inside this person's head?

Concerning the very next question: After discussing the human scum, Trump called on a friendly face "in the back" (see text above).

Specifically, he threw to Jenn Pellegrino of the crackpot news org OAN. The question she asked was surpassingly weird even for OAN:

PELLEGRINO (continuing directly): Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. President. The CDC has finally admitted to profound failures with testing kits from the beginning of the outbreak. Is this a function of lax oversight from the Obama-Biden administration?

That's actually what she said! It's hard to believe, but since the question came from Pellegrino, it was surely intended as a way to let the angry commander-in-chief pummel Obama/Biden.

Even Trump refused to follow that trail. But that's how dumb that question was in this, our somewhat less than rational best of all possible worlds.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE: Swabs are easy, discourse is hard!

MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2020

Charles Blow gets it (half) right: We're pleased to make an important announcement:

In this morning's New York Times, Charles Blow gets it (half) right!

In print editions, Blow's column appears beneath a brisk headline, along with a boxed sub-head. Those headlines run like this, exclamation point included:

Stop Airing Trump's Briefings!
Allowing disinformation to appears as news.

Is it time to stop airing these daily Six to Eight O'Clock Follies? We recommend Blow's entire piece, but he makes his main case here:

BLOW (4/20/20): Let me be clear: Under no circumstance should these briefings be carried live. Doing so is a mistake bordering on journalistic malpractice. Everything a president does or says should be documented but airing all of it, unfiltered, is lazy and irresponsible.

As the veteran anchor Ted Koppel told The New York Times last month, “Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context.” He continued, “The question, clearly, is whether his status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every briefing live.” His answer was “no.”

We have trained the American television audience to understand that regular programs are only interrupted for live events when they are truly important, things that the viewers need to see now, in real time. These briefings simply don’t reach that threshold. In fact, some of what Trump has said has been dangerous, like when he pushed an unproven and potentially harmful drug as a treatment for the virus.

No amount of fact checkers, balancing with the briefings of governors, or even occasionally cutting away, can justify carrying these briefings live. The scant amount of new information that these rallies produce could be edited into a short segment for a show. The major headlines from these briefings are often Trump’s clashes with reporters, the differences he has with scientists and the lies he tells. Just like in 2016, it’s all theater.

For ourselves, we wouldn't describe these events as "briefings" in the way Blow does in that passage. But he makes his case very well, getting this matter half right.

Why do we that Blow is just half right? We say that because of the many "failures to perform" which he doesn't mention.

Blow does describe the relentless misconduct of President Trump during these non-briefing briefings.

"The briefings are marked by Trump’s own misinformation, deceptions, rage, blaming and boasting," Blow correctly writes. "He delivers his disinformation flanked by scientists and officials, whose presence only serves to convey credibility to propagandistic performances that have simply become a replacement for his political rallies."

Every point is accurate. Beyond that, Blow notes the lack of actual information which emerges from these events. He contrasts that with the constant onslaughts of rage and the persistent misinformation.

Blow savages the commander in chief in perfectly accurate fashion. But that's pretty much where his analysis ends.

By inference, he does criticizes the cable channels which continue to air these events. But he doesn't name those channels, and he doesn't name the network executives responsible for this decisions.

He doesn't mention the embarrassing way the cable channels start teasing these gong-shows around 5 PM each day. That said, there are other things Blow doesn't mention:

He doesn't mention the scattershot way our upper-end journalists tend to conduct their non-questioning questioning at this absurd events. He doesn't mention the poorly-framed questions these lambs are often inclined to present even when they do attempt to confront their disordered commander.

Finally, he doesn't mention the New York Times and other such major news orgs. He doesn't mention the way these major news orgs have allowed this daily disinformation campaign to go unreported and undiscussed within their own deeply flawed pages.

This weekend's daily sessions were utterly daft. The commander spilled with interruption, invective and rage. Meanwhile, our reporters showed their endless skill at leaving obvious questions unasked.

"Swabs are easy," the commander said yesterday during several mind-numbing monologues. It was only one in a succession of dispiriting points made during yesterday's session.

"Swabs are easy, ventilators are hard," this dumbest of all known Americans actually said at one point.

He failed to explain why, if swabs should have been so easy for the nation's governors to acquire, he had now announced, for the first time, that he would be using the Defense Production Act to compel their manufacture.

That apparent paradox went unresolved during yesterday's scattershot questions and rambling non-answer answers. At one point, the commander even fell back on an earlier, absurd-sounding claim as he discussed the swabs:

TRUMP (4/19/20): They have a lot of them, some of them, some of the states. They were shipped to states and the states don’t know where they are.

As once with ventilators, so too now with swabs! Some states have already been given plenty of swabs. They just don't know where they are!

The governors don't know where their swabs are! With that, we cite one last major point Blow doesn't mention today:

He didn't mention the failure of major orgs, like the New York Times, to discuss the possibility that something is badly wrong inside the commander's head. This refusal to serve by our major news orgs has helped create the predicament we now find ourselves in.

Should these daily "briefings" be aired? Blow argues, very capably, that they shouldn't be aired.

This flies in the face of normal presumptions, according to which a presidential press event is an important matter. That said, we think that Blow makes his basic point extremely well.

On that basis, we'd say that Blow gets this matter half right.

What's to be done, the other Vladimir once thoughtfully asked. Starting tomorrow, we'll answer that long-standing question.

Blow is right about the endless misconduct of our Palooka-in-chief. But he largely gives a pass to the upper-end press elite regarding their treatment of these obscene daily TV shows.

All this week, we'll look at the ways the upper-end press has failed to confront the problem we face. Swabs may be easy, but discourse is hard—as is competent journalism during a time of interlocking plagues.

Anthropologists say our species wasn't built for matters like this. Starting tomorrow, we'll list the actions our elites might want to take if we really are "the rational animal," as such elites have long said.

This afternoon: The scattershot and the fury

BREAKING: The 1.27 percent solution!

SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2020

And a favorite spot on the floor: It's done on a daily basis. Last evening, twenty-one minutes in, the most logorrheic president in American history inevitably went there again.

The president had even better news to share about those N95 masks. As always, the news was incredible.

Roughly twenty-one minutes in, the commander in chief offered this:

TRUMP (4/17/20): The vaccines are coming along really, really well. Johnson and Johnson is very well advanced, and one thing is, they have to—we’re having great, great success, but we have to test them, and it takes a long period of time. It takes probably over a year, unfortunately. But therapies likewise are coming along very, very well. Therapies are immediate. When we get that, that’ll be a big day.

We’re also equipping our medical warriors on the front lines. In total, we have the Project Airbridge, and the Airbridge has been incredible. The National Strategic Stockpile, and every other channel the federal government has deployed—if you think about this, 44.5 million N95 masks, nearly 524 million gloves, 63.5 million surgical masks, and more than 10 million gowns. And we have 500 million masks coming in very soon, between manufacturing and orders. 500 million masks.

We've tried to punctuate fairly.

We'll confess that we do have one question. If the vaccines haven't been tested yet, how do we know that they're coming along really, really well—that Johnson and Johnson having great, great success?

Ditto, perhaps, for the therapies. They were said to be coming along very, very well.

Whatever! Today, we focus again on the N95 masks the commander-in-chief has provided. Their number now stands—"Think about this!"—at 44.5 million, the gobsmacked commander declared.

For today, we won't simply "think about" that very large number. We'll also provide a percentage—a percentage in which we attempt to compare masks provided to actual need.

We should have done that yesterday. Today, we'll finish the job.

In the passage posted above, the president was again engaged in The Gong-Show of Very Large Numbers. For over a month, he has staged this gong-show every day while a somnolent press corps looks on.

As we showed you yesterday, the president cited other incredible numbers earlier in this past week. On Tuesday, he said this:

TRUMP (4/14/20): My administration is also distributing vast amounts of medical supplies to states across the country through Project Air Bridge, which has been an amazing success...It’s logistically incredible what they’ve done. And we’ve also been working on this with the military. And these people have been—the genius of all of them together, it has been incredible to watch.

In total, through all channels, the federal government has developed and delivered 39.4 million N95 masks, 431 million gloves, 57 million surgical masks, and 10.2 million gowns. We ordered 500 million masks, and they’ll be coming shortly. And we’ve distributed 100 million masks.

It was incredible and amazing. In total, through all channels, the federal government had developed and delivered 39.4 million N95 masks!

As of last evening, the number had risen to 44.5 million. Inevitably, that sounded like a very large number of N95 masks—but as before, it happened again:

The president cited the number of N95 masks which had been provided. He forgot to tell us how many N95 masks will be needed before this is done.

How many N95 masks will our health care workers need? As we showed you yesterday, a Trump official testified in early March that we would need something like 3.5 billion such masks.

As of last night, the commander in chief said that he had provided 44.5 million such masks. We did the math, and we now announce the result:

Based upon the numbers provided, the commander has provided a truly incredible 1.2714 percent of the masks we were told we would need! We are going to round that down to 1.27 percent.

Question:

Will we really need 3.5 billion N95 masks before this ordeal is over? We have no idea. Nor do we know if the commander in chief has provided the number he claims.

We do know this—while his number does sound very large, it may be a drop in the bucket. And even though he has performed this gong-show over and over and over again, no one in our slumbering press corps has ever pursued this amazingly basic point.

We're speaking of the slumbering children who defer to the commander in various ways at his daily briefings. We're speaking of the major newspapers which fail to pursue such basic points.

We're speaking of the cable news channels which have presented reports about shortages of protective gear in hospitals without pursuing the question raised by the president's very large numbers. We're speaking of people like Joe and Mika, who rant and rail every morning but can't deal with something like this.

This gong-show has been performed in the face of the upper-end press corps day after day after day, edging ever further into prime time. How do our news orgs react?

They keep airing this silly prime-time mess. They fail to fact-check or clarify even this blindingly obvious, deeply important matter.

This daily gong-show of very large numbers is an obvious propaganda tool. Along with many other daily monologues, it's an obvious part of the commander's re-election campaign.

It doesn't provide useful information. Indeed, absent assessments of likely need, these blindingly stupid recitations are baldly misleading—but our news orgs let them go.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. We were never "the rational animal."

Anthropology lessons continue next week. We still owe you a list of the actions our major news orgs should take.

On a happier note: We've been reading Aljean Harmetz's 1992 book, The Making of Casablanca. Here's why:

We've long marveled at the enduring appeal of a movie which wasn't designed to be a great film. How did this accident actually happen? And what makes this film seem so deep?

We think we can answer your sensible questions! Let's hope we get to discuss the topic some day, even as we continue our letters to our 9-year-old kids.

Regarding the latter matter, we apologize for our suspension of service. Immersion in those daily briefings, and in the press corps' reaction to same, makes it hard to flip a switch and think about loftier topics.

By the way, Anne Frank also had a favorite tree. Somehow, she even persisted in having a favorite spot on the floor. One translation:

I go to the attic almost every morning to get the stale air out of my lungs. This morning when I went there, Peter was busy cleaning up. He finished quickly and came over to where I was sitting on my favorite spot on the floor. The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak...I also looked out the open window, letting my eyes roam over a large part of Amsterdam, over the rooftops and on to the horizon, a strip of blue so pale it was almost invisible.

"As long as this exists," I thought, "this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?"

Compare to Thoreau's "delight," as recalled last week. Especially under the circumstances, such a miraculous state of being deserves full exploration.

As before, so too today—we strongly recommend Francine Prose's 2010 book, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. It's one of the best books we've ever read, one of the most revealing.

President Trump evokes President Metzler!

FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2020

For amusement purposes only: President Trump can really lapse into a drone as he reads his prepared remarks at the start of his daily so-called briefings.

It has long seemed to us that he may be dyslexic. Dyslexia isn't a measure of intelligence. It just means that the person in question has a harder time processing symbols.

Whatever the reason, the president can really lapse into full monotone as he reads his prepared remarks. It's hard not to think of the similar problem displayed by President Metzler.

Actually, we refer to actor Chris Klein, who gets elected student body president of Carver High in the 1999 film, Election.

Personally, we don't care for the very sour film; we think of it as a "people-hater." That said, Candidate Metzler shows the way for President Trump as he reads his campaign speech before Carver's student body.

In the film, Paul Metzler is a highly likable big galoot who's quarterback of the football team but may not be super-sharp. He's running against the profoundly annoying Tracy Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon.

(Through the person of Flick, the people-hating in the film takes on a misogynist edge.)

When it's time for Metzler to give his speech, Klein delivers a hunched-over, steady-state drone as he reads from a folded-up piece of notebook paper. We can't help recalling Klein's performance when we watch President Trump reading each day's prepared monologues.

You can see Candidate Metzler's short speech here. It starts at 1:45, after Candidate Flick delivers her own short address.
.
Watching Trump, we think of Klein. For amusement purposes only.

WILLING ENABLERS: The dumbest gong-show of them all!

FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2020

While reporters slept: On Monday, April 6, commander-in-chief Donald J. Trump was busy explaining his greatness.

Slumbering journalists lounged before him. Soon it came time for the commander to tell them one of their favorite tales.

We refer to the monologue about all the equipment Donald J. Trump—apocryphal people call him "Sir"—has amazingly sent to the states. Once again, the stupid old gong-show of very large numbers was spread all through the land.

"Think of that," the president said. Also, "Get the number:"

TRUMP (4/6/20): FEMA and HHS have directly distributed 11.7 million N95 respirators. Think of that! Get the number—11.7 million N95 respirators. 11.7 million.

26.5 million surgical masks, 5.3 million face shields, 4.4 million surgical gowns, and 22.6 million gloves. 22.6 million gloves.

"Think of it," the logorrheic commander exclaimed. "Get that number!"

As of April 6, the commander said that FEMA and HHS had directly distributed 11.7 million N95 respirators! For the record, the commander seemed to be referring to items which are commonly referred to as "N95 masks."

The commander seems to use the terms interchangeably, as will become clear in the statements presented below.

At any rate, as he's done every day for the past many weeks, the commander in chief had rattled off an array of very large numbers. He has staged this particular gong-show day after day after day after day as American journalists sat before him, generally at best half awake.

The very next day, the commander was at it again. This time, he cited a very large number of "face masks." He didn't bother saying which kinds of face masks he had in mind:

TRUMP (4/7/20): Beginning in May, we’ll be receiving almost 300 million new face masks. We’re going to have masks of about 300 million. They’ll be starting to be delivered in May and during the month of June. So we’re ordering a big stockpile, and we’re thinking about doing an extra 200 million should we need them, or for the—or for the stockpile. So we’ll be in a position to have something incredible. It’ll be a total of 500 million masks.

And today, 750,000 new protective gowns landed in Dallas, Texas, as a result of a partnership led by the federal government, DuPont, and FedEx. And that’s been a great partnership. That’s worked very well. So we have 600 and—and we have 750,000 new protective gowns. And these are at a high level—very high quality.

It would be a total of 500 million masks! It was something incredible, the embarrassed commander acknowledged.

In the interest of brevity, let's jump ahead to the very large numbers the commander has cited this week. Here he was on Monday and Tuesday as journalists stared into space:

TRUMP (4/13/20): To date, we’ve facilitated the supply of more than 38 million N95 masks nationwide. This week, we’ll be sending 2 million N95 masks to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The vice president will go into more detail. He’s got great detail on that, and I think it’s a pretty amazing story. We have a lot of masks already in stock, and we have more coming.

TRUMP (4/14/20): My administration is also distributing vast amounts of medical supplies to states across the country through Project Air Bridge, which has been an amazing success. We have completed 44 flights—and these are flights of very, very large airplanes, massive cargo planes—44 flights of critical supplies as of today, and an additional 56 flights scheduled in the near future. We have some very brilliant people working on this. It’s logistically incredible what they’ve done. And we’ve also been working on this with the military. And these people have been—the genius of all of them together, it has been incredible to watch.

In total, through all channels, the federal government has developed and delivered 39.4 million N95 masks, 431 million gloves, 57 million surgical masks, and 10.2 million gowns. We ordered 500 million masks, and they’ll be coming shortly. And we’ve distributed 100 million masks.

Vice President Pence would have great detail. But as you could tell from those very large numbers, the commander had delivered "vast amounts of supplies" to the various states. The performance had been amazing, incredible. The airplanes had been very large.

Here at this site, we've sat through each of the daily briefings over the past many weeks. Excruciating as these sessions have been, they've provided an amazing array of anthropology lessons—lessons concerning the mental abilities and tendencies of our floundering species.

Day after day, again and again, these briefings have featured a recurring parade of very large numbers. The commander has said that these numbers are incredible. "We're in very good shape," he has said.

This Tuesday, as this gong-show continued, the White House published an official account of total supplies rendered to date. According to the title of the fact sheet, "President Donald J. Trump Has Led A Historic Mobilization."

The fact sheet included quite a few very large numbers! Some of those numbers were these:

GETTING SUPPLIES TO THE FRONTLINES: President Trump is moving heaven and earth to make sure our healthcare workers on the frontlines have the supplies they need.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) deliveries coordinated or currently being shipped by FEMA and HHS:

38.2 million N95 respirators
32.6 million surgical masks
5.5 million face shields
4.7 million surgical gowns
30.3 million gloves

[...]

Again, that "38.2 million N95 respirators" seems to mean 38.2 million N95 masks. Indeed, that's the number the commander had cited the previous day, in the April 13 statement posted above. ("To date, we’ve facilitated the supply of more than 38 million N95 masks nationwide.")

Day after day, week after week, the commander has cited these very large numbers as upper-end journalists, seated before him, drift in and out of consciousness. Routinely, he has said how "incredible" the numbers were—the very large numbers he's dangled before them without occasioning a murmur or a stirring or even or peep of complaint.

This has been the gong-show of very large numbers—the very first matter we cited when we started discussing these daily non-briefing briefings. Because alas:

While the commander kept saying how many masks he's provided, he never remembered to say how many such masks we would likely need. He never said how many we'd need, and none of the journalists asked!

None of the journalists ever requested that second number! They listened as the commander in chief told them how many items had been provided—but they never asked him to say how many such items we'd need.

The commander never said! But as it turns out, one such number had been cited, back nearer the start of this mess.

How many N95 masks is the nation likely to need? All the way back on Tuesday, March 3, a major official had said.

That major official was Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS. On March 3, Kadlec testified before a Senate committee. In a fascinatingly bungled report, CNBC reported what Kadlec had said:

LOVELACE (3/3/20): Health and Human Services official Dr. Robert Kadlec estimates the country would need roughly 3.5 billion of medical-grade N95 masks, which filter out about 95% of all liquid or airborne particles.

“We have about 35 million,” Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, said before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Tuesday.

We'll need roughly 3.5 billion N95 masks, the Azar assistant had said! And that's billion, spelled with a B.

As he testified, Kadlec mistakenly said that the 35 million masks we already had was ten percent of what we would likely need. In his report for CNBC, Berkeley Lovelace noted that 35 million is actually only one percent of 3.5 billion.

(In an addendum, CNBC reported that HHS had agreed that, while Kadlec's basic numbers were right, he had bungled his percentage; he should have said one percent.. But good God! In a typical manifestation, the headline on the CNBC report still lists the wrong percentage. "Ten percent," the headline still says! So it tends to go all through our upper-end press corps.)

Let's return to the present. Just this week, the nation's leading super-spreader kept performing a daily gong-show.

Moving heaven and earth, the commander had arranged for "more than 38 million N95 masks" to be provided to the states. In his televised prime time performances, the commander kept telling the country that this was amazing, incredible. He forgot to say that our overall need might be something on the order of 3.5 billion such masks!

The commander forgot to mention that second number. The journalists forgot to ask.

People posing as upper-end journalists have sat before this disordered man day after day after day after day as he has performed this endless, repeated gong-show.

No one has asked for the second numbers. Nor have newspapers chased this rolling gong-show down in dedicated pages about the president's endless misleading / false / bogus monologues. The ones which get aired in prime time.

Donald Trump seems to be badly disordered. That said, anthropology lessons abound in the way our upper-end journalists have slumbered and snored as he has rattled on and on in this, the first or fourth year of the plague.

Has anything been reported clearly and well? If reporters can't even handle this gong-show, what tasks can such humans perform?

Still coming: The actions the upper-end press hasn't taken. The actions they still ought to take.

For extra credit only: If you search on "Kadlec AND 3.5 billion," you'll find occasional stray reports on what the Azar aide told the Senate.

But as with CNBC, so too almost everywhere else. The reports we've found have been almost as error-riddled and unclear as the commander's daily monologues. The variegated lack of clarity is routine, impressive, depressing.

Go ahead—conduct that search! See what you're able to find.

What we learned on our April vacation...

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2020

...concerning the W.H.O.: It's almost impossible to keep up with President Trump's misstatements and grievances.

This week, the whipping-boy has been the World Health Organization—the WHO.

As Nicholas Kristof wrote this morning, "many Americans know nothing about the W.H.O." We'll guess that's true of almost everyone. With that in mind, we thought we'd flesh out one point from Kristof's column.

Again, we'll quote from Kristof: "Its worldwide budget (of which the United States pays about one-fifth) is less than that of some American hospital centers."

That statement may seem puzzling. If so, it's because the WHO's budget is actually rather small on the global scale. So is our country's contribution to that budget.

We'll let NPR start to explain:

HUANG (4/15/20): The World Health Organization runs on a two-year budget cycle. For 2020 and 2021, its budget for carrying out its programs is $4.8 billion, or $2.4 billion per year.

"The WHO has a budget around the size of a large U.S. hospital. It's about one quarter of the budget of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," says Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, which is an independent agency that works with that WHO.

That $2.4 billion may seem like a lot, but it seems to be "around the size of [the budget of] a large U.S. hospital."

As you can see in the NPR report, our country has contributed slightly less than $500 million per year toward that overall spending in recent years. That's barely a rounding error within the federal budget.

President Trump has stirred up a major fuss concerning the WHO. Given the size of the fuss, we were surprised to see how small our annual outlay is.

For extra credit only: The NPR report contains a chart showing how much other countries (and organizations) have contributed to the WHO's recent budgets.

On a per capita basis, the contributions from Norway and Sweden are massively larger than ours. On a per capita basis, it looks to us like several other countries have been outspending us, with several others lagging behind.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a giant contributor. On a per capita basis, these two people (2) have pretty much gone through the roof.

WILLING ENABLERS: Nicholas Kristof's beautiful column!

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2020

But also, his self-assessment: For American president Donald J. Trump, it was "just another manic Wednesday."

Consider:

In his prepared remarks at yesterday's foreshortened briefing, the commander declared that "what's coming out of" the Voice of America is, in fact, "disgusting."

He threatened to use his (imagined) constitutional authority "to adjourn both chambers of Congress," saying that what the Congress is doing "is a scam, and everyone knows it."

Renewing an announcement from the day before, he said that he's suspending funding to the World Health Organization, "pending a review of the organization’s cover-up in mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak."

Regarding the Paycheck Protection Program, he said the program "has saved millions of American jobs. It’s been an incredible success and they want to replenish it now, but again, the Democrats don’t want to do that."

The president was pushing back against scams and cover-ups and disgusting behavior. Later, in a brief Q-and-A period, he performed a heroic adaptation of his claim that "the cupboard was bare" when he came into office.

He declared that, like the WHO, the World Trade Organization has been "treating the United States for decades so badly, and they’ve been so in favor of China." He closed with a rambling rant about the WHO, during which he said such things as these:

TRUMP (4/15/20): I feel very badly about the World Health Organization, but it's been a tool of China. It's been, as I say, totally China-centric. You take a look at everything that's happened.

[...]

China took off when it joined the World Trade Organization because of what's happened. Think of it! They're considered a developing nation? And because they're a developing—and we're not! But we're a developing nation too in my book. Okay, we're developing too.

But the fact is, we have been treated so badly by these organizations, and believe me, I'm looking at that one too. We're winning a lot of lawsuits right now that we never won before in the past. We're winning a lot of money that we never won in the past. That's with the World Trade. But with the World Health Organization, what's happened there is a disgrace.

[...]

You know what we do in Africa, with AIDS, people have no idea what we do and the money we spend...Nobody talks about it. Nobody gives us credit. We do that, and we do it very directly. But we're spending billions of dollars to help people live, all over the world. But we're spending $500 million to the World Health Organization, and there's something very bad going on. And you know what? I've gotten very much involved. It's been going on for a long period of time, and we don't want to be the suckers anymore.

We're a developing nation too! Meanwhile, what's happened at the WHO is a disgrace.

We don't want to be the suckers any more. Nobody gives us credit!

So far, we're just scraping the surface of the remarks made on this manic Wednesday. That said, we've long recommended pity for this apparently disordered man, and we do so again today.

That said, his weirdest comments yesterday weren't the ones we've already cited. For our money, yesterday's weirdest presentation was the familiar monologue shown below.

This familiar monologue concerned our tariffs on goods from China. It followed a presentation by agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue:

TRUMP: Before the vice president comes up, I just wanted to say, speaking of Sonny, China has paid us billions of dollars. Many, many billions of dollars in tariffs, which we’ve distributed some to the farmers, because they were targeted. We have many billions of dollars being held by Sonny, and I’ve told him to distribute much of that money to the farmers. Our farmers were targeted, and now they’re benefiting by the amount that they were targeted, and we are very honored to do that.

Sonny, you’re going to start that process very soon. You’ll let the farmers know. Nobody can take advantage of our farmers, so we have a lot of money that we’ve taken in from China. We’re going to be distributing that money from Sonny to the farmers, and there’s tremendous money over at above that.

That money was paid directly into the treasury of the United States. This has never happened to China before. They never gave us 25 cents. Now they’re paying us billions of dollars, and we appreciate it.

Once again, for the ten millionth time, the commander baldly misstated the basic nature of tariffs. As everyone knows, no money is "taken from China" in connection with our tariffs.

This obvious point has been fact-checked again and again, dating at least to April 2019. But Trump won't stop repeating this claim, which he presents as another aspect of his unparalleled greatness.

The president won't stop with this ridiculous claim. Our journalists stare as he makes it. The sheer absurdity of this "forever misstatement" stands as a marker of our second massive national problem in this, the first year of the plague.

In fairness, the American press corps is confronted with a massive problem in the person of President Trump. His misstatements are endless and vast, as is his free-floating sense of personal grievance.

In the face of this massive problem, high-end reporters sit supine and somnolent, every day, at his ludicrous daily briefings. CNN's Kaitlan Collins continues to press for actual answers to actual questions. The other journalists sit and stare, then offer a scattershot array of frequently pointless questions.

Their news orgs also display a striking inability to focus, a stunning willingness to work as enablers by refusing to discuss matters which are blindingly obvious.

Donald J. Trump staged a manic Wednesday, much like the Monday and Tuesday before it. By way of contrast, Nicholas Kristof presents a beautiful column in today's New York Times.

Kristof writes about the WHO, the president's latest villain. As with Ron Klain, so too here—Kristof notes the shortcomings of the organization, while giving a detailed account of its work around the world.

What's beautiful about Kristof's column? There's beauty in the ability to care about matters like these:

KRISTOF (4/16/20): Many Americans know nothing about the W.H.O., but its worldwide budget (of which the United States pays about one-fifth) is less than that of some American hospital centers. Yet it is charged with fighting Ebola and polio, saving children’s lives and keeping the world safe from pandemics like this one.

[...]

I’ve known the W.H.O.’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for almost 20 years and have had disagreements with him, largely over his accommodation of dictators. But I have deeply admired his passion for battling malaria, malnutrition and maternal mortality, and I’ve seen his work save lives. Growing up in Ethiopia, he lost a younger brother, Yemaine, apparently to measles, and that left him with a deep commitment to improve health care access.

The W.H.O. is bureaucratic, frustrating, timid—and indispensable. No other organization can fill its international role overseeing the fight against disease. It has battled an outbreak of Ebola since last year in Congo, and that’s one reason we haven’t had Ebola cases in the United States.

Every day, the W.H.O. saves lives. It has promoted safe childbirth, and the number of women dying in childbirth has been cut almost in half over 25 years. It fights female genital mutilation and helps women with obstetric fistula. It is struggling to eliminate cervical cancer. It is part of the campaign against polio.

[...]

If I seem angry, it’s because I’ve seen too many women dying in childbirth in poor countries, too many children dying of diarrhea, too much leprosy. Gutting the W.H.O. would mean more kids dying of malnutrition, more moms dying of cervical cancer, and the coronavirus infecting more people in more countries—impairing the pandemic response, which may well cost even more American lives.

There's beauty in the ability to care about matters like those. There's also beauty in Kristof's knowledge, especially in his personal knowledge—in the fact that he has been present, on the ground, to see people losing their lives, but also to see lives saved.

Consider Director Tedros. Very few living Americans have lost a younger sibling to measles. Polio faded from American nightmares during the 1950s. There isn't a whole lot of leprosy here at this point in time.

That said, do those other lives matter? Kristof is saying they do. Along the way, he says the WHO actually has "been too cozy with China." He also says that the WHO, as part of its daily activity, is actually saving lives.

We were struck by the beauty of the values in Kristof's column. We were surprised by the self-assessment which came very late in his piece.

"If I seem angry," Kristof wrote—and her hadn't seemed angry to us at all. To us, that surprising self-assessment seemed highly instructive.

Tomorrow, we'll return to the slumbering, supine figures who populate the president's daily non-briefing briefings. We'll attempt to list some things the upper-end press corps could and should do in response to the pandemic of mental disorder which emanates, on a daily basis, from our commander in chief.

We admire Kristof's values. Regarding the wider press corps, are our upper-end reporters and our upper-end news orgs even capable of anger? Are they capable of being angry about the right things?

We recommend pity for Donald J. Trump. We recommend a termination of somnolence concerning his blatant disorders.

Tomorrow: Endless upper-end enabling versus respect for the truth