The blame and distraction game.

Imagine being the leader of a country that could possibly have 200,000 of your people die from a pandemic, and in an address to those people you brag about being number one on facebook. 

First, it's a a lie (both former president Obama and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo have more followers), but it also shows just how much of a narcissist, and ego- driven the individual charged with leading us is. Just watching him up there day after day gives me no confidence that he will be able to handle what we are facing.

We used to be able laugh at trump's buffoonery and his gross incompetence, but given what we are all going through, it's just not funny anymore. Now, more than ever, America needs someone in charge who knows what they are doing. This is trump's first government job, and it shows. The scary thing is that the people around him who might ---and should-- know better are afraid of him, and so they act as sycophants instead of being real advisers.

Sadly, we can't even count on these news conferences to give us information anymore. Yesterday, rather than give us an update on the virus, trump and his political team held a press conference (complete with Bill Barr standing behind him) to tell us what the administration was doing to fight the war on drugs and the Venezuelan President. Yes, that's really what they led with. At this point I am quite sure that must Americans could give a damn about the war on drugs. In fact, quite a few of us are probably saying give us more drugs not less. Lord knows we need something to take us away from this craziness.

Here is the thing, our government is supposed to be protecting us from the scourge drugs, that's kind of their jobs. We need to hear about what's going on with this pandemic that is killing people and making them sick, not the war on drugs. 

But we know why they did it, to create a distraction, because they STILL can't give us any concrete answers about this crisis and how to fight it. It's like Groundhog Day with these people.

Now, predictably, they are blaming everyone else for us being in this predicament but themselves. Yesterday Mike Pence blamed it on the CDC, and Donald trump has blamed the nurses, doctors, the governors, the Chinese, President Obama, and President Bush. 

"The wartime president Harry Truman used to keep a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here.” Trump, however, seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands. “Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”'

So much for leadership.