As BuzzFlash Predicted on March 11, Could Trump Declare a State of Emergency and Martial Law if Coronavirus Soars in US?
March 11, 2020
To dismiss Trump’s disinformation and bombast, one needs to understand that he is fundamentally evil. (Gilbert Mercier)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
A February 9 Associated Press article noted that Vladimir Putin is shepherding through a Russian Constitutional amendment that would allow him to continue serving as president past his current term limits:
Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed his tightly guarded political plans Tuesday and supported a constitutional amendment that would allow him to seek reelection in 2024 by restarting the term count.
The constitutional change would pave the way for the 67-year-old Putin to stay in office until 2036, if he desires.
I would argue that this announcement may shed some light on what Putin’s US asset, Donald Trump, may have in mind in what appears to be a calculated effort to obfuscate and obstruct efforts to limit the Coronavirus infections.
In fact, given the history of the delay in getting out test kits for the Coronavirus, one could argue that Trump is intentionally sabotaging the US government plans to limit the reach of the pandemic. The details about how Trump has continually undercut efforts, from not accepting testing kits from the World Health Organization, to opposing warning the elderly not to fly, unless necessary, and not to take cruises, Trump has continually put the US population at risk based on the science of the infection rate and the epidemiological path of the Coronavirus.
Also, as of March 11, Politico reports that the CDC admits there will be another likely delay in all its promised Coronavirus testing due to an extreme shortage of “RNA extraction” lab tools. This means the undetected infected individuals will, as noted, continue to spread the virus because they don’t know that they have it. For Trump, this is “welcome” news because it will continue to keep the “numbers” misleadingly down. It is also evidence that the Trump administration continues to be duplicitous and misleading to the US public about the public health crisis of our times, as they abet the pandemic’s spread.
If you doubt the seriousness of the epidemic facing us, you might want to watch this “CBS Evening News” video interview with a Harvard epidemiologist. He solemnly predicts 40-70% of every adult in the world over the age of 35 will be Infected with Coronavirus. It is quite sobering to contemplate, and, no, Trump, flu shots will not stem the tsunami.
To repeat, Trump’s administration has held up the massive manufacture and distribution of test kits (only 2000 were tested as of last Thursday, perhaps up to 6000 now, but the CDC says it doesn’t really know the number), and Mike Pence and Alex Azar keep promising a million test kits this week, but Pence admitted the other day that it could be weeks before a full supply is sent to states
The CDC is not even listing the number of tests on its website and other essential information. The Trump administration is even refusing to release to Congress a Director of National Intelligence report that had warned of the need to prepare for a pandemic.
The DC media write story after story stating that "insiders" in the White House say Trump is "struggling" to deal with the CV crisis. No he's not; he wants to create chaos and then take advantage of the maelstrom of illness and death that he has exacerbated.
As the Washington Post concluded in a March 9 editorial:
Even this week, as officials everywhere began calling for precautions, Mr. Trump continued his wrongheaded public relations campaign. “Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” he tweeted. As public health officials belatedly stress the importance of social distancing, Mr. Trump’s countermessaging does more than cause confusion. It will cost lives.
The dismantling of the pandemic response unit Obama had put into place (the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense) in the wake of the Ebola virus, the lack of testing kits at a stage that the Coronavirus could be kept to a manageable level and his disregard for the infection of passengers and crew on the Crown Princess because it would “drive up the numbers” of those infected indicate not only a sadistic sociopathology, but also, perhaps, a cunning that Trump may have a treacherous plan to opportunistically take advantage of the Coronavirus.
By limiting the testing in the early stages of US infection, as previously noted, Trump has essentially allowed an unknown number of carriers to transmit the disease, which advances exponentially. By the time that the test kits are fully available, the number of persons who have contracted the Coronavirus will skyrocket when confirmed. Trump likely is aware of this, and his possible motives explain his apparent efforts to actually expand the infection rate, rather than limit it.
Trump’s appointment of MIke “HIV Epidemic and Cigarettes Do Not Cause Cancer” Pence was further indication that Trump was not seriously going to try and mitigate the coming Coronavirus epidemic. In addition, while today the White House heralded private insurance, Medicaid and Medicare coverage for Coronavirus testing and treatment, millions of uninsured Americans will not be covered and will present a continuous source of transmission to the population because they cannot afford testing or treatment.
The DC press corps has largely amplified Trump’s misinformation.
Members of the DC Press Corps would not for a moment tolerate Trump's ignorance and temper tantrums in one of their teenagers. He doesn't meet the behavior, cognitive, honesty and civility standards of being an adult. He is an errant child in the corpulent body of an adult con artist — and a highly dangerous one at that. In fact, the fundamental key to understanding Trump is to acknowledge that he is evil.
Just the other day, Trump tweeted an image of himself fiddling while the US enters a horrific future of exponential Coronavirus devastation. It was an ominous and brazen sign of how he sees himself pouring gasoline on efforts to limit the Coronavirus spread.
Trump's Stalin-like chokehold on accurate Coronavirus information and his dissemination of ludicrous disinformation have become the norm. Even the CDC, FDA and NIH are kept on a short leash of public announcements.
What we are left with is Trump's egregiously erroneous disinformation that is facilitating the pandemic, and almost no transparency from Trump administration. It amounts to criminal negligence, because his deflecting and science-denying comments are covering up the rapid spread of the Coronavirus, under the radar, because there appears to be no pandemic detection and mitigation plan — and because of the delay in testing. States and localities appear to be on their own, based on anecdotal accounts (received by BuzzFlash and disclosed in articles.) This cumulatively may result in an infection and death rate so large that hospitals may be overwhelmed beyond capacity to treat all patients in need.
In confronting our fate largely in the hands of a person in the White House who could care less about our lives, we should remember that Mexicans and Central Americans were the canaries in the coal mine for Trump’s view of people as disposable. The Trump/Miller disdain for their lives was again revealed in an initial administration attempt to remove all signs in immigration courts that provided information on how to avoid becoming infected.
Obviously, Trump’s major concern about the Coronavirus was its effects on the markets plunging, and the impact that would have on his election prospects in 2020. His reactions to the Coronavirus have been largely attempts to shore up confidence in the markets and reassure the most negatively affected corporations that his government will provide socialized corporate subsidies. This will cost billions upon billions of dollars.
That brings us back to the Vladimir Putin’s efforts to extend his reign over Russia almost indefinitely. This is a goal close to Trump’s heart.
A lengthy January/February 2019 Atlantic Magazine article makes the cogent case, as the headline summarizes, “The Alarming Scope of the President's Emergency Powers: From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things”:
This legal regime for emergencies—ambiguous constitutional limits combined with a rich well of statutory emergency powers—would seem to provide the ingredients for a dangerous encroachment on American civil liberties. Yet so far, even though presidents have often advanced dubious claims of constitutional authority, egregious abuses on the scale of the Japanese American internment or the post-9/11 torture program have been rare, and most of the statutory powers available during a national emergency have never been used….
How far could the president go in using the military within U.S. borders? The Supreme Court has given us no clear answer to this question. Take Exparte Milligan, a famous ruling from 1866 invalidating the use of a military commission to try a civilian during the Civil War. The case is widely considered a high-water mark for judicial constraint on executive action. Yet even as the Court held that the president could not use war or emergency as a reason to bypass civilian courts, it noted that martial law—the displacement of civilian authority by the military—would be appropriate in some cases. If civilian courts were closed as a result of a foreign invasion or a civil war, for example, martial law could exist “until the laws can have their free course.” The message is decidedly mixed: Claims of emergency or necessity cannot legitimize martial law … until they can….
In the past several decades, Congress has provided what the Constitution did not: emergency powers that have the potential for creating emergencies rather than ending them. Presidents have built on these powers with their own secret directives. What has prevented the wholesale abuse of these authorities until now is a baseline commitment to liberal democracy on the part of past presidents. Under a president who doesn’t share that commitment, what might we see?…
Congress, of course, will undertake none of these reforms without extraordinary public pressure—and until now, the public has paid little heed to emergency powers. But we are in uncharted political territory. At a time when other democracies around the world are slipping toward authoritarianism—and when the president seems eager for the United States to follow their example—we would be wise to shore up the guardrails of liberal democracy.
There is no likelihood, given the lockstep GOP Senate acquittal of Trump on impeachment, that Congress could rein in Trump should he declare a state of emergency as the pent up Coronavirus explodes across the US once large scale testing begins. Hospitals, in the worst case scenario, may be, as noted above, beyond capacity. A significant percentage of the population will be stricken because of the infection multiplier ratio. The US — and world — economy and people’s livelihood will be in a shambles.
What better excuse for Trump to implement a state of emergency. Given that the entire nation of Italy is now on a quarantined lock-down, would it be inconceivable that Trump would institute martial law and assert federal control over Coronavirus hot spots, which may become the entire nation?
And, finally, is it entirely far-fetched that he would delay or cancel the 2020 elections? Who is going to stop him? Can we rely on the Supreme Court with its 5-4 partisan majority? Remember, Republicans play for keeps, and they view Trump as a strong man who can lead them into one-party rule, heralding the end of democracy as we know it.
The resistance to Trump has become numbed and fatigued by his ruthlessness, lies and seizure of powers under the concept of “unitary executive authority,” which Bill Barr fully supports. Would the 5-4 GOP SCOTUS majority punt, as it has been doing, to Congress, where Mitch McConnell would get his caucus to back the final stage of a Trump/Republican coup?
Yes, it may appear hyperbolic and a fringe conspiracy theory. However, why would Trump work so hard to keep the virus expanding while he “fiddles,” unless he was going to utilize the inevitable overwhelming pandemic to his advantage.
And what would be more opportunistic than to emulate his mentor, Vladimir Putin, in seizing power without an end in sight?
Implausible. Maybe, but then again, as the Atlantic notes, this is Donald Trump — an unstable non-genius of evil intent — whom we are talking about, and he knows no boundaries and could care less about the health (and national security) of the nation. Furthermore, Trump is a man who has tweeted he is king of America, has claimed he is “owed” a second term because of his “persecution” by the Democrats, and recently tweeted an animation showing him winning elections in 2020, 2024 and 2028.
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