June 13, 2020

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH

The word is that that the top Army brass opposed calling back 1100 graduating cadets, who had been sent back home due to the Coronavirus, so that Donald Trump could have a “patriotic” setting to deliver a jingoistic speech at West Point. Their objections, as anonymously reported, centered around the unnecessary need for the graduating class to return and have them potentially exposed to COVID-19. In addition, there is the not inconsiderable inconvenience of all the cadets coming back solely so Trump could have a military audience to try and reinforce his bona fides as Commander-in-Chief.

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Some reports indicate that virus prevention care is being taken including face masks and social distancing, but it is the size of the audience and the Cadets being back on the West Point campus together that violates Trump’s CDC guidelines recommending that groups this large not be convened.

As a June 11 Slate article stated:

Trump is scheduled to give a commencement address this Saturday to the graduating cadets at West Point. Rather than delivering it remotely, as various leaders have done for other military academies, Trump—against the wishes of West Point’s leaders—demanded that the Army cadets return to campus, isolate themselves for two weeks, and then, during the ceremony itself, sit in tight formation, ignoring CDC guidelines on social distancing. Of the 1,100 graduating cadets, 17 have tested positive for the Coronavirus. The whole business, which seems designed to provide footage of Trump speaking before the newest flock of military officers for his reelection campaign, has sparked quiet resentment from many in the Army.

And this is not the week to further irk military leadership, present and past, who have denounced any military involvement in Trump’s threat to implement the Insurrection Act. Some also renounced the brutal attack on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square so Trump could have an awkward photo-op of him holding a Bible upside down in front of St. John’s Church. Even Mark Milley, the top US general, apologized for joining the Trump entourage in combat fatigues as an inappropriate intrusion of the military into domestic political issues. More than 1/3 of the US Army enlisted personnel are minorities, according to a 2017 Guardian article. So when Trump is speaking to a military audience, many in the Armed Forces are minorities likely to sympathize with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. They may may also resent his full week of straight-on racism.

Trump gaslighted the media and many Americans to move from “don’t toss so many lives into the COVID-19 furnace” to believing that the Coronavirus is “disappearing, like magic.” However the reality is that it is starting to surge again in many states that “reopened” for the very reason that it was the preventive measures over several weeks that reduced the death toll to 1000 a day. All this wily virus needed was to have the controls lifted to start pushing the infection and death numbers up again, but Trump has said that no matter what, he is urging states to not put controls in place again. Indeed, he has personally contributed to an increase in infections and deaths by not wearing a mask, which many mask-less people see as their reason for not wearing the essential high-percentage preventer of transmission.

So beyond West Point, on Juneteenth (June 19), Trump says he is going to get back to his ringmaster and reality TV starring role in Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of one of the worse white massacres against Blacks (1921). The racism of the date and location is akin to when Ronald Reagan started his campaign for president in 1979 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three white civil rights volunteers were summarily executed by the Klan. It symbolized the increased evolution of the GOP into the Confederacy Party. Reagan talked about “states rights” (code for let Southern states discriminate and police Blacks as they wish) but not the three martyrs from Yankee territory. Racists got the message, and Trump is yanking at the same chain.

(Update: Because of backlash “from black supporters,” Trump, in a Friday night tweet, says that he is changing the “Juneteenth” rally to the following day, an acknowledgement about how his blatant racism is starting to box him in.)

Which brings us back to how Trump is now exposing Americans willy-nilly to potential COVID-19 by resuming large gatherings of thousands of people. To foster the notion that the Coronavirus is extinguishing itself is one thing. Trump, in reality, knows the threat of Coronavirus infection in large crowds from asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic and carriers with symptoms. That is why he and his campaign are demanding that attendees sign release of liability waivers if they become infected at a Trump Rally.

Similarly, Trump is planning to give his nomination acceptance speech in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, once again exposing thousands and thousands of people to COVID-19 transmission, and no doubt requiring the delegates to sign wavers. It is possible that it may be difficult to find delegates to attend because many are older and don’t want to risk infection, but then again these are “alternative facts” Republicans.

In addition to the indifference to Coronavirus infection and death, Trump picked Jacksonville on this date to emphasize, yet again his racist appeal. According to the New Civil Rights Movement,

President Donald Trump’s campaign has been blasted for racism for holding his first campaign rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth.

On Thursday evening, the Republican National Committee announced another major speech would be given on an anniversary of racial injustice in a location with a shocking history.

“It’s official: President Trump will deliver his Aug. 27 convention speech in Jacksonville, Fla., inside an arena that holds 15,000 people, after his demands for an event without social distancing rules led to a rift with Democratic leaders in North Carolina, where the Republican convention was originally planned,” The New York Times reports. “Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, confirmed on Thursday that the speech would take place at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, a diverse city where the mayor and the governor are both Republican allies of Mr. Trump’s…..”

“The event for Mr. Trump in Jacksonville, not in Charlotte, N.C., as planned, coincides with one of the darkest days in the city’s history. The president will address his supporters on the 60th anniversary of ‘Ax Handle Saturday,’ when a white mob organized by the Ku Klux Klan attacked mostly black civil rights protesters sitting at the city’s whites-only lunch counters,” the newspaper reported.

BuzzFlash can only imagine there were some “good people” among the Klan, right Donald?

Just before departing the White House to wreak havoc in Lafayette Square last week, Trump held a press briefing (no questions) in which the White House Correspondents' Association had reporters’ chairs socially distanced. But when they came in to sit down, the chairs had been packed together, once again Trump assisting COVID-19 transmission to ensure a better photo-op.

A June 12 CNBC article notes:

The rise in coronavirus cases seen in about half a dozen states across the U.S. isn’t the feared “second wave” — it’s still the first, scientists and infectious disease specialists say.

To be defined as a second wave the virus would need to retreat and reappear, or a new variant would have to emerge, said Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. “The recent increase in cases does not reflect either.”

BuzzFlash has been warning for weeks that the “reopening” of the economy was based on a fallacious and deadly duplicitous Trump narrative. The Coronavirus, however, doesn’t follow Trump’s disinformation. It has its own science and epidemiology, and it is starting to rise up again after Trump bullied the country to “reopen” in more states.

But Trump is betting on what he has desired from the beginning of his “reopen” campaign: most Americans would accept the sacrifice of their lives in order to benefit the plutocracy and Trump’s re-election.

Trump could walk over dead bodies in a crosswalk and not bat an eye.

We are up against a willful man slaughterer. On the heel of the unprecedented #BlackLivesMatter movement, we now need a deafening uprising of outrage on how Trump is continuing to obstruct measures to contain the Coronavirus.

Right now, a revolt for saving lives from the pandemic is still largely dormant. We have been numbed by Trump’s corruption and sadism.

It must erupt like a volcano and cover the White House in lava ash until Trump cannot resist the pressure to save tens and tens thousands of lives.

It is the moment for transformative rage. End racism and racist policing, and put in a regime that will actually try to contain COVID-19, not facilitate it.

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