Posts Tagged ‘CORONAVIRUS’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2026 at 6:12 pm
On February 7, 2020, during a recorded phone interview, President Donald J. Trump shared his thoughts—and the latest medical Intelligence—about the Coronavirus with Washington Post editor/investigative reporter Bob Woodward.
TRUMP CONFESSES TO BOB WOODWARD
Bob Woodward: And so, what was [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] saying yesterday?
Donald Trump: Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation.
Woodward: Indeed, it is.
Trump: It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flues. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?
Woodward: I know. It’s much forgotten.
Trump: It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward: What are you able to do for—
Trump: This is more deadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this is deadly stuff.
“This is deadly stuff.”
Unfortunately for those who believed in him, Trump was not saying this in public.
WHAT TRUMP SAID IN PUBLIC
From January to early March, 2020, Trump and his allies within the Republican party and Fox News Network repeatedly assured Americans they had nothing to fear.
Donald Trump
Barnstorming the country in a series of hate-filled political rallies, Trump told his supporters:
- January 22:“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
- February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”
- February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
- February 25: “CDC & my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
- February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
- February 26: “The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
- February 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
- February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
- February 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
Coronavirus
- February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….We did one of the great jobs….One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia’….They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax….It’s all turning, they lost….And this is their new hoax.”
- March 4: “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better.”
- March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country of keeping it down. A tremendous job of keeping it down.”
- March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful.”
- March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President.”
- March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus.”
- March 9: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, The risk is low to the average American.”
- March 10: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
MORE CONFESSIONS TO BOB WOODWARD
But on March 19, Trump offered a completely different take on the virus in another phone interview with Woodward:
Donald Trump: Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-
Bob Woodward: Yeah. Exactly.
Trump: Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in—
Woodward: So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump: Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-
Woodward: Sure. I want you to be.
Trump: I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2026 at 12:11 am
The 9/11 terror attacks frightened Americans more than any event since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.. But they didn’t slaughter as many Americans nor affect their lives as intimately as has the advent of COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
First, COVID-19 has killed far more Americans than 9/11. As before mentioned, 9/11 snuffed out the lives of almost 3,000 Americans. But as of September 15, 2020, more than 194,000 Americans had died of COVID-19. And the plague had not finished its murderous work.
Second, while 9/11 affected two American cities—New York and Washington, D.C.—COVID-19 spread throughout the country. As epicenters like New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago gain national attention, the virus continues to seep into rural centers—especially in the South and Midwest.
Third, the combination of evil and incompetence of the Trump administration shook Americans’ faith in the ability—and even the willingness—of the Federal Government to protect them.
TRUMP AND BOB WOODWARD
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks attacked President Donald Trump in terms usually reserved for serial killers. On the March 13 edition of The PBS Newshour, he said:
“This is what happens when you elect a sociopath as president, who doesn’t care, who has treated this whole thing for the past month as if it’s about him. ‘How do people like me?’ Minimizing the risks. ‘Does the stock market reflect well on me?’ And he hasn’t done the things a normal human being would do, which was to, let’s take precautions….
“And he’s incapable of that. And he’s even created an information distortion field around him.”
Yet even David Brooks could not have predicted the scandal that successfully threatened Trump’s chances for re-election on November 3.
Consider what Trump revealed privately to legendary investigative reporter Bob Woodward—with what he was telling the American public in countless addresses.
Woodward—along with Carl Bernstein—achieved imperishable fame in 1972-74 as the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate-related stories led to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon.
Bob Woodward
THE ADVENT OF CORONAVIRUS
First, some background on the Coronvirus itself:
The virus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019. Its first reported victim became ill on December 1.
By December 31, the outbreak was traced to a novel strain of Coronavirus.
Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that affect birds and mammals. In humans, Coronaviruses can cause pneumonia and may cause bronchitis.
As President, Trump had access to Intelligence sources denied to his fellow citizens.
Trump first learned of the virus on January 3, 2020. This did not prevent him from playing golf on January 4, 5, 18 and 19.
On January 19, the first Coronavirus case appeared in the United States.
On January 27, then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney tried to get the President to act.
But, according to officials who spoke with the Washington Post, Trump was “dismissive” of early briefings “because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.”
Trump fired Mulvaney one month later.
Then, for Trump, it was back to the golf course—on February 1, 2 and 15.
Coronavirus
TRUMP CONFESSES TO BOB WOODWARD
On February 7, he decided to share some of his Coronavirus Intelligence with legendary Washington Post editor and reporter Bob Woodward.
Why he chose to do this remains a mystery.
It’s possible that Trump—whose hatred of the press is infamous—thought he could “take” Woodward. Or perhaps even cultivate him.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks so. On the September 11 edition of The PBS Newshour, Brooks offered:
“First, the hubris to think, you could be the president and talk to Bob Woodward and not get hurt by it. Donald Trump walked right into this.
“Two, the extreme cynicism of not only bumbling around in February and March, because you didn’t know how serious the pandemic was, but the confirmation that you did know, and you still thought you could talk it down, as if you can talk down a force of nature, and that this—you wouldn’t end up getting caught.”
If Trump thought he could “take” or cultivate Woodward, it wasn’t the first time a high-ranking government official had done so.
William J. Casey
During the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, CIA director William J. Casey spilled countless secrets to Woodward—which found their way into a 1987 book: Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Woodward admitted that he didn’t know why Casey had been so forthcoming. 
On February 7, 2020, the following telephone interview between Trump and Woodward took place:
Bob Woodward: And so, what was [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] saying yesterday?
Donald Trump: Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation.
Woodward: Indeed, it is.
Trump: It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flues. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 10, 2026 at 12:07 am
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
They did so by turning four commercial jetliners into fuel-bombs—and crashing them into, respectively, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.; and—unintentionally—a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
(Its destination had been the White House or the Capitol Building. But its passengers, alerted by radio broadcasts of the doom awaiting them, resolved to take over the plane instead. The hijackers slammed the jet into the ground to avoid capture.)
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
But within less than a month, American warplanes began carpet-bombing Afghanistan, whose rogue Islamic “government” refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the had of Al-Qaeda who had masterminded the attacks.
By December, 2001, the power of the Taliban was broken—and bin Laden was driven into hiding in Pakistan.
For more than 16 years, the United States—through its global military and espionage networks—relentlessly hunted down most of those responsible for that September carnage.
On May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS invaded bin Laden’s fortified mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and shot him dead.
U.S. Navy SEALs
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S BOASTING
On December 13, 2001, the Pentagon released a videotape of Osama bin Laden discussing the attacks in Arabic with another man who appears to be a cleric.
The videotape had been discovered by American forces in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
On the tape, bin Laden says he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of destruction caused at the World Trade Center. He had only expected the top portion of the Twin Towers to collapse:
“We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all.
“Due to my experience in this field [he had graduated from King Abdul Aziz University with a civil engineering degree in 1979] I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only.
“This is all that we had hoped for.”
Osama bin Laden
9/11 VS. COVID-19
Now, consider this:
It’s September 11, 2020. Nineteen years to the day since the United States suffered its worst terrorist attack in history—a loss of 3,000 Americans.
And, in less than a year, the United States is nearing a death-toll of 200,000 from an enemy just as deadly and unrelenting as Al Qaeda.
That enemy is Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19.
The September 11 attacks jolted Americans out of their complacency toward Islamic terrorism. Since the 1980s, the United States had responded to terrorism via its legal system. After 9/11, Americans opted for a military response against Middle Eastern terror cells.
For months afterward, America feared the worst—that other cities would soon become targets for massive terror attacks. But, for all the death and destruction wrought that day, this didn’t happen.
There were two major reasons for this:
First, under its new director, Robert Mueller, the FBI completely refocused its mission from investigating crimes to preventing them. This resulted in a proactive rather than reactive mindset and approach. Even terrorists who felt safe abroad found themselves arrested by FBI agents employing the sort of techniques previously used against foreign spies.
Second, the attacks led to the creation of a huge new agency—the Department of Homeland Security. Massive sums of money were doled out to local police departments across the country, arming them with new hires and more sophisticated anti-crime technologies.
And for the first time since the dawning of the age of flight, the Federal Government took responsibility for preventing airline terrorism. Previously, this had fallen to individual airlines—which, seeing it as a financial drain, had assigned it a low priority.
The attacks also led to a complete restructuring of the United States military.
In the past, Americans had excelled in set-piece battles and wars. But when fighting enemies where guerrilla warfare negated overwhelming military power, the United States had done poorly—first in Korea (1950-1953) and then in Vietnam (1960-1975).
As a result, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield reorganized the Pentagon’s bureaucracy, assigning highest priority to building unconventional military units such as the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, and the Navy’s SEALs.
These were all major changes resulting from the 9/11 attacks. They cost billions of dollars and got huge publicity. But they didn’t affect the lives of everyday Americans as intimately as has the advent of COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
Coronavirus
The 9/11 terror attacks frightened Americans more than any event since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.. But they slaughtered only a fraction of Americans, as compared with the 194,000 who have died from COVID-19, in less than a year..
Osama bin Laden deservedly gained infamy for plotting 9/11. But Donald Trump, who repeatedly lied about the dangers of COVID-19, remains beloved by about 40% of Americans.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 20, 2026 at 12:20 am
“I’ve chosen this life. I know what it is. There are things about it that sometimes are disturbing. But you just focus on the job you have to do. And just put all that other stuff aside.””
The speaker wasn’t a longtime Mafia enforcer turned-State’s-witness. He was Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
And he was speaking with an NBC News reporter about death threats he had received.
At 81, Fauci was getting the sort of protection reserved for organized crime witnesses through the Justice Department’s Witness Security Program.
Dr. Anthony Fauci
The U.S. Marshals Service had deputized nine officers from the Department of Health and Human Services as bodyguards for Fauci.
So what did this man—who has dedicated his entire adult life to protecting Americans against infectious diseases—do to require such protection?
He had merely spoken the hard medical truth about Coronavirus. In doing so, he had at times contradicted then-President Donald Trump’s ignorance- and lie-riddled statements.
For example: Trump had loudly touted hydroxychloroquine, used for treating malaria, as a miracle cure for the Coronavirus.
Yet Fauci dared to point out there have been no scientific trials of the drug for its effectiveness against Coronavirus. Moreover, given the medical condition of some patients, it could even prove fatal.
Statements like this infuriated Trump’s base of—at best—half-educated fans.
During the 2016 Presidential race, after winning the Nevada primary, Trump infamously celebrated his victory: “We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
A February 24, 2016 USA Today story covering this event carried the headline: “Donald Trump loves the poorly educated—and they love him.”
And at the bottom of the story came this warning: “Some—journalists, mostly—noted that Trump’s proud embrace of poorly less educated voters and the resulting shock may only cause those less educated voters to embrace Trump all the more.”
And they do.
There has been a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans on the merits of higher education.
An August 20, 2019 story in Forbes noted that a Pew Research survey, conducted in July, had found that “67% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning respondents say higher education is having a positive effect on the country compared to only 33% of Republicans and Republican-leaning participants.“
Furthermore, “the percentage of Republicans attributing a positive effect to higher education has steadily eroded from 58% (2010), 53% (2012), 54% (2015), 43% (2016), and 36% (2017). Among Republicans, 59% now say higher education has a negative effect on the U.S., compared to just 18% of Democrats.”
In 2026, 23% of Republicans expressed confidence in higher education, while 50% of Democrats did.
In March, 2020, as COVID-19 raged unchecked throughout the country, an NBC News poll found that that only 30% of Republicans said they would actually listen to the advice of doctors to stay away from large, crowded areas to avoid Coronavirus.
These are the same people who get their version of reality from Right-wing sources like Fox News Network and Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27, 2020 show, Limbaugh dismissed Coronavirus as “the common cold,” then added: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know.
“And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC and they’re at the NIH, and they’re up, well—yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there.
“But has there been any job assessment for them? They’re just assumed to be the best because they’re in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I’ve been questioning.”
This is the same Rush Limbaugh who said, in 2015: “Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”
Five years later, in February, 2020, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—announced that he had Stage Four lung cancer. He died on February 17, 2021.
And then there was President Trump—and his chorus of cheerleaders.
On February 25, 2020, Kayleigh McEnany, his fourth press secretary in three years, said on Fox Business: “This President will always put America first. He will always protect American citizens. We will not see diseases like the Coronavirus come here.”
During February and March, he repeatedly downplayed the threat of the disease, even as it spread across the United States.
By the time Trump left office—on January 20, 2021—more than 400,000 Americans had died of COVID-19.
These, then, are the types of “reliable sources” that millions of Right-wingers take as gospel—while dismissing the warnings of the medical profession as erroneous or, worse, products of a liberal conspiracy.
And by daring to contradict such blatant ignorance—if not outright lies—Dr. Anthony Fauci made himself a target for Right-wing hatred and death threats.
On January 23, 2025, a re-elected President Donald Trump—who has been guarded by the Secret Service since 2015—removed Fauci’s taxpayer-funded federal security detail.
Fauci subsequently hired a private security team.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 9, 2026 at 12:16 am
Voters who believed that Donald Trump cared about them should have asked themselves: “Does he care about my children?”
And the answer would have been: “No.”
The father of modern political science, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) is widely thought of as the personification of Satan.
Actually, Machiavelli was a passionate republican, who spent most of his life in the service of his beloved city-state, Florence.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In his masterwork, The Discourses, he warned that life is complex and no course of action is guaranteed safe or successful.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a man of simplistic “solutions” for simplistic audiences.
By early April, 2020, he had refused to issue a national “stay-at-home” order to contain the spread of the Coronavirus. When states began issuing shutdown orders of their own, he railed against those orders and demanded that “we need to reopen the country.”
Donald Trump
What lay behind this demand were two hidden agendas. He wanted to:
- Quickly revitalize—and take credit for—a once-booming economy, even though this was largely created by President Barack Obama.
- Return to his Nuremberg-style rallies, where he could slander anyone he wanted while basking in the worship of thousands of his fanatical followers.
Which is why he clearly missed this warning Machiavelli offered in The Discourses:
“…I shall speak here only of those dangers to which those expose themselves who counsel a republic or a prince to undertake some grave and important enterprise in such a manner as to take upon themselves all the responsibility of the same.
“For as men only judge of matters by the result, all the blame of failure is charged upon him who first advised it, while in case of success he receives commendations. But the reward never equals the punishment….
“I see no other course than to take things moderately, and not to undertake to advocate any enterprise with too much zeal, but to give one’s advice calmly and modestly.
“If either then the republic or the prince decides to follow it, they may do so, as it were, of their own will, and not as though they were drawn into it by your importunity.
“In adopting this course it is not reasonable to suppose that either the prince or republic will manifest any ill will towards you on account of a resolution not taken contrary to the wishes of the many.”
But, by May, 2020, more Americans were wary about “reopening the country” than about rushing to do so.
On the May 15, edition of The PBS Newshour, New York Times columnist David Brooks noted:
“If you look at actual behavior, people locked themselves down before any politician took a move. And even in those states where the politicians are opening up, people are still locking down….
“And so I think the key decisions right now are not being made in statehouses and certainly not the White House. They’re being made in living rooms, as people decide, is it safe? Can I go out?”
Coronavirus
By pushing his mantra—“America needs to reopen NOW!”—Trump was risking the lives of millions of Americans. But he was also risking the future of his Presidency.
If “reopening” the country proved disastrous, he had no back-up plan to offer.
Several states—such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—that re-opened saw swarms of people flooding into bars and restaurants. They didn’t wear masks or practice “social distancing.” Packed together like sardines, they offered themselves like a Right-wing sacrifice to Coronavirus.
The results were inevitable.
A new wave of COVID-19 erupted after America “reopened.” More employees were laid off—or refused to come to work for fear of Coronavirus.
The economy continued to tank.
As summer neared its end and millions of students faced returning to school, Trump offered his next “solution” to the Coronavirus pandemic: Send them back to school—-and not through virtual classes at home.
Trump wanted children to return to possibly COVID-19-infected classrooms.
And he wasn’t asking parents to send their children back to school. He was ordering them to.
On July 8, 2020, he tweeted that he might withhold federal funding from schools that did not resume in-person classes that fall.
Why was he so insistent on this?
Trump knew that before parents could return to work, their kids needed to return to class, He hoped that would boost the economy—for which he could take credit.
And that would boost his chances for re-election in November.
Just as the ancient Canaanites sacrificed their children to the god Moloch, so Trump expected his followers—and opponents—to risk their children’s lives for him.
Ancient Canaanites offering their children as sacrifices to Moloch
And the sacrifices quickly started coming. Approximately 2.1 million children in the United States tested positive for COVID-19 by the end of December 2020.
Those who supported Trump in 2020 clearly valued the lives of their children far less than putting a ruthless psychopath back into power.
And, in 2024, 77 million Americans forgave him the loss—or near-loss—of their children and sent him back to the White House.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 28, 2025 at 12:25 am
Next hero: Marie Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine (2016 – 2019). She had joined the Foreign Service in 1986, and served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan (2005 – 2008) and Armenia (2008 – 2011).
In May 2019, on President Donald Trump’s orders, the State Department recalled Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine. She had earned respect from the national security community for her efforts to encourage Ukraine to tackle corruption.
But she had been criticized by Right-wing media outlets—notably Fox News Network––and by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Marie Yovanovitch
CNN reported that Yovanovitch stopped Giuliani from interviewing witnesses in his search for politically damaging information against former Vice President Joe Biden, whose son, Hunter, had had business dealings in Ukraine.
On October 11, 2019, she appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA). She did so in defiance of orders by the White House and State Department to not attend.
“She was a hero even before she hit the hearing room,” wrote Charles Pierce for Esquire magazine.
“She told them to stuff their directives, she would answer a congressional subpoena like a citizen is supposed to do. And she didn’t sneak in through the basement. She walked into the Capitol through the front doors, and she didn’t do so to fck around.”
Testifying for nearly 10 hours, Yovanovitch said that Trump had removed her from her post owing to “unfounded and false claims” and “a concerted campaign against me.”
She believed that associates of Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani, might have thought “that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
And she warned that the State Department was being “attacked and hollowed out from within. State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees.”
After retiring from the State Department in 2020, Yovanovitch became a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Another hero-victim on Trump’s hate-list was Chis Krebs.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda had played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote. But he got enough help from Russian President Vladimir Putin to triumph in the Electoral College.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And point man for this was Chris Krebs.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
Now he was director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:
- Sharing Intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly.
As a result of the vast increase in election security, Trump not only failed to win the popular vote again but couldn’t get the help he expected from Putin.
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:
“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.
“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.”
Yet, by depriving Trump of Russian help, Krebs ensured a victory for democracy.
On January 6, 2021, the House and Senate counted the Electoral Votes—and pronounced Joseph Biden the winner—bringing an end to Trump’s reign of criminality and treason.
In his 1960 poem, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko spoke for those Russians who had maintained their integrity in the face of Stalinist terror:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives in the face of Trump terror.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 27, 2025 at 12:10 am
Next up: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers.
Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich (September 25, 1906 – August 9, 1975)
Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, the former military hero now falsely condemned and executed as a traitor by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) also became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) secret police sent to arrest him.
Dimitri Shostakovich
“He had a large picture of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down.
“I don’t know if I can explain how heroic a deed that was….As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person….
“And naturally, photographs flew into the fire first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.
“Zhilayev wasn’t afraid. When they came for him, Tukhachevsky’s prominently hung portrait amazed even the executioners.”
“What, it’s still up?” one of the secret police asked.
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Meanwhile, Stalin has been universally condemned as one of history’s greatest tyrants.
Third hero: Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Graduating from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1992, he received his Master’s Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2007.
From 2017 to 2018 he commanded the USS Blue Ridge. In November, 2019, he was given command of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
On March 24, 2020, reports circulated that three members of the crew had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day the number of stricken sailors increased to eight. A few days later, it was “dozens.” The sailors reportedly became ill at sea, two weeks after a port call at Danang, Vietnam.
The initial cases were airlifted to a military hospital. The Roosevelt was ordered to Guam. After the ship docked on March 27, 2020, all 5,000 aboard were ordered to be tested for the virus. But only about 100 stricken sailors were allowed to leave the ship. The rest remained on board.
On March 30, Crozier emailed a four-page internal letter to multiple Naval officials, pleading to have the majority of the crew evacuated and quarantined on shore. Given the crowded sleeping quarters and narrow passageways of the vessel, Crozier wrote that it was impossible to follow social distancing and quarantine procedures:
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our Sailors….
“This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”
Brett Crozier
Crozier sent his letter via a non-secure, unclassified email to 20-30 recipients, as well as the captain’s immediate chain of command. He reportedly believed that his immediate supervisor would not allow him to send it.
And his superior later confirmed that he would not have allowed Crozier to send it.
On March 31, someone leaked the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
On April 1, the Navy ordered the aircraft carrier evacuated. A skeleton crew of 400 remained aboard to maintain the nuclear reactor, the fire-fighting equipment, and the ship’s galley.
On April 2, Crozier was relieved of command by acting United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
By that time, about 114 crew members—out of a total of around 4,000—reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
As Crozier disembarked, sailors loudly saluted him with a standing ovation: “Cap-tain Cro-zier!”
Crozier was reassigned to a shore position and retired in 2022.
Modly claimed that Crozier’s letter “raised alarm bells unnecessarily. It undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem, and creates a panic and this perception that the Navy’s not on the job, that the government’s not on the job, and it’s just not true.”
It was true.
Actually, the Trump administration had frittered away January and February, with President Donald Trump giving multiple—and misleading—press conferences. In these, he played down the dangers of COVID-19, saying that “we’re on top of it”—even as the virus spread across the country.
“It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, DC,“ continued Modly. [Italics added]
This was the United States Navy under Donald Trump—who threw “betrayal” and “treason” at anyone who dared reveal the truth about institutional crimes and failures.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 26, 2025 at 12:10 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Five heroes, five villains.
Two of the heroes are Russians; three are Americans.
The villains: One Russian (actually, Georgian); three American.
First up—in order of disappearance: Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (pronounced too-ka-chev-sky).
Tukhachevsky (February 4, 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937.
He commanded the Soviet Western Front during the Russian-Polish War (1920-21) and served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army (1925-1928).
He fought to modernize Soviet armament, as well as develop airborne, aviation and mechanized forces. Almost singlehandedly, he created the theory of deep operations for Soviet forces.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
All of these innovations would reap huge dividends when the Soviet Union faced the lethal fury of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
In 1936, Tukhachevsky warned Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that Nazi Germany might attack without warning—and ignite a long and murderous war.
Stalin—the son of a Georgian cobbler—resented Tukhachevsky’s coming from a noble family. A monumental egomaniac, he also hated that Tukhachevesky’s fame rivaled his own.
Warned of the approaching German danger, Stalin shouted: “What are you trying to do—frighten Soviet authority?”
Joseph Stalin
The attack that Tukhachevsky warned against came five years later—on June 22, 1941, leaving at least 26 million Russians dead.
But Tukhachevsky wasn’t alive to command a defense.
The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion.
An example of Stalin’s paranoia occurred one day while the dictator walked through the Kremlin corridors with Admiral Ivan Isakov. Officers of the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) stood guard at every corner.
“Every time I walk down the corridors,” said Stalin, “I think: Which one of them is it? If it’s this one, he will shoot me in the back. But if I turn the corner, the next one can shoot me in the face.”
In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.
Its victims included:
- Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
- Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
- Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
- One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.
And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
On his confession, which survives in the archives, his bloodstains can clearly be seen.
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason.
It was a sham: The accused were denied defense attorneys, and could not appeal the verdict—-which was foregone: Death.
Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head.
In a Russian version of poetic justice, five of the eight generals who served as Tukhachevsky’s judges were themselves later condemned and executed as traitors.
From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist.
Then, on February 25, 1957, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered his bombshell “Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In this, he denounced Stalin (who had died in 1953) as a ruthless tyrant responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women and children. He condemned Stalin for creating a “personality cult” around himself, and for so weakening the Red Army that Nazi Germany was able to easily overrun half of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943.
On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated.”
Today, he is once again—rightly—considered a Russian hero and military genius. And Stalin is universally—and rightly—seen as a blood-stained tyrant.
Next hero: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev)
Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers. Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich.
Zhilayev, a member of the Russian Academy of Art-Sciences, taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
In 1938, he, too, became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD secret police sent to arrest him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on October 3, 2025 at 12:10 am
Republicans have a long and despicable history of scapegoating one group after another: Blacks, liberals, Hispanics, gays, Asians, women, Muslims, environmentalists, lesbians.
And now they have added scientists generally and doctors in particular to their list of hated targets.
Since taking office on January 20, Donald Trump has virtually declared war on the American medical establishment.
Summarizing Trump’s first 100 days in office, Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, warned:
- “Trump’s health administrators fired or forced resignations of senior staff, including the top vaccine regulator at the FDA, directors of many NIH institutes, and senior FDA staff involved in the regulation of food, tobacco and new drugs.”
- “The administration has also proposed consolidation of many HHS agencies with near elimination of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).”
- “The Trump Administration stripped vital public health information from HHS, CDC and FDA websites and abandoned all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.”
- “Trump issued an executive order announcing his intent to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), suspending funding and other support and recalling U.S. government personnel assigned to work with WHO—to the detriment of several global health programs and emergency response efforts.”
- “Trump’s allies in Congress are seeking to cut Medicare and Medicaid, with dangerous implications for access to health care, particularly for seniors and people with disabilities.”
- “The Trump Administration is threatening to further privatize Medicare, threatening to hinder access to care and put the long term health of the program in jeopardy.”
- “Trump and his allies in Congress want to give Big Pharma its top demand to undermine the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program—blocking seniors’ and people with disabilities’ access to Medicare-negotiated prices until 13 years after a drug is approved.”
On September 4, for the first time since he took office as Secretary of Health and Human Services on February 13, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. faced his critics at the Senate Finance Committee.
Defending the wholesale firings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he said: “The people at the CDC who oversaw that process—who put masks on our children, who closed our schools—are the people who will be leaving. ”
He called the United States the “sickest country in the world” due to the prevalence of chronic diseases:
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Kennedy attacked the integrity of Susan Monarez, whom he fired as CDC director after less than a month on the job. She had been nominated by Trump, endorsed by Kennedy and confirmed by a Senate vote in July.
Kennedy claimed: “I asked her: ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said ‘No.’ If you had an employee who told you they weren’t trustworthy, would you ask them to resign?”
In testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on September 17, Monarez offered a different explanation for her firing: She refused to cede to Kennedy’s demands to pre-approve vaccine recommendations for the public and he wanted her to fire career scientists.
“He just wanted blanket approval. Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology.
“He called CDC the most corrupt federal agency in the world, emphasized that CDC employees were horrible people. He said that CDC employees were killing children and they don’t care.”
Susan Monarez
In late August, Kennedy told her he had “already spoken with the White House several times about having” her removed, she said.
Kennedy used much of his testimony to lie or lob insults, rather than refute his critics with facts.
On August 9, a 30-year-old Georgia man, Patrick Joseph White, using an automatic rifle, had fired over 180 rounds on the CCD headquarters in Atlanta, breaking about 150 windows.
Influenced by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, he believed the COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.
When Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock asked Kennedy if his disparaging remarks about CDC employees could have instigated the shooting, Kennedy retorted: “Are you complicit in the assassination attempts on President Trump?”
“Why have you acted behind closed doors to overrule scientists and limit the freedom of parents to choose the COVID vaccine for their children?” asked Democratic New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.
Kennedy: “This is crazy talk.”
It wasn’t. In many states, pharmacists cannot legally administer vaccines unless they are endorsed by the CDC’s advisory panel.
During 2020—Donald Trump’s final year of his first term as President—COVID-19 emerged as the greatest threat to worldwide health since the 1919 Spanish influenza.
Coronavirus
To this crisis, Trump responded with:
- Lies about its dangers
- Attacks on medical authorities who urged masking and social distancing
- Inciting his followers to ignore governors’ “lockdown” orders to stop the spread
- Thefts of medical supplies from Blue states
- Quack cures (bleach, UV light)
- Demands to “Re-open the country!” and
- “Learn to live with it.”
At least 400,000 Americans died as a result.
Through his wholesale gutting of America’s healthcare system—once considered the best in the world—Trump and his anti-science accomplices are setting the United States on a collision course with the next deadly epidemic.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on October 2, 2025 at 12:22 am
As a Presidential candidate in 2024, Donald Trump warned Americans that he planned to decimate their healthcare system: His Secretary of Health and Human Services would be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
On October 27, speaking at a rally in Madison Square Garden, Trump said: “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.
“The only thing I don’t think I’m going to let him even get near is the liquid gold that we have under our feet,” he added, referring to oil.
Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is a self-admitted former 14-year heroin addict, which he has said began at age 15.
On September 16, 1983, he was charged with heroin possession in Rapid City, South Dakota. In February 1984, he pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of possession of heroin, and was sentenced to two years’ probation and community service. After his arrest, he entered a drug treatment center.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Since 2005, Kennedy has peddled vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. Among these: HIV/AIDS denialism (that the human immune deficiency virus—HIV—does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
His vaccine misinformation has included:
- Vaccines cause autism;
- The COVID-19 vaccine—which has saved countless lives—is “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
- There is no comprehensive system for monitoring vaccine safety.
So how did such a man become the final arbiter of the American healthcare system? During 2024, he ran an independent Presidential campaign before dropping out in August and endorsing Trump.
Predictively, since taking office on February 13, Kennedy has proven a disaster for the scientific approach to medicine.
On February 14, around 1,300 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were laid off by the administration, which included all first-year officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.
In August, over 600 CDC employees were laid off and a number of programs completely dismantled, including maternal and child health services, oral health programs, and the CDC’s long-running Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys.
At the May 6 meeting of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Rep. Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-Washington) decried the Trump administration for attacking American healthcare.
The first pediatrician elected to the House, Schrier warned: “We’ve got to recognize that our nation’s health care system is under attack right now.
Kim Schrier
“What we’re seeing now from the current administration has been infuriating and reckless, and this includes slashing medical research and essential staff and funding from agencies like the CDC, the NIH and the FDA, and this kneecaps U.S. research and innovation, and it jeopardizes public health.
“It also cedes the ground for U.S. leadership in the world, and basically hands that leadership to China. That’s plain wrong, and I feel like it just undermines U.S. leadership in the world.”
Referring to the $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cuts mandated in Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” then certain to be passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, Schrier noted:
“These cuts would be disastrous and detrimental for the most vulnerable members of our communities, many of whom are at higher risk for cancer, for deaths from cancer, for late detection of cancer, and I want you to know that I’m doing everything in my power to call out the destruction these cuts would cause, to restore funding for medical research, especially cancer research, and to stand up for patients.”
Trump signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law on July 4.
On June 9, 92 National Institute of Health researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers signed their names in a protest letter to Jay Bhattacharya, their Trump-appointed director. Another 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.
Accusing the Trump administration of spreading “a culture of fear and suppression,” the declaration said: “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.”
Its accusations included:
- NIH’s terminating 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion;
- The resulting human costs—such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants;
- NIH’s ending a $5 million research study when it was 80% complete.
On August 9, a 30-year-old Georgia man, Patrick Joseph White, fired over 180 rounds on the CCD headquarters in Atlanta, breaking about 150 windows and piercing some of the blast-resistant windows.
Influenced by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, he believed the COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.
White died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, blamed the attack on the anti-vaccine rhetoric on the Trump administration. Kennedy, they charged, “is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC’s workforce through his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety.”
Under Kennedy, CDC has laid off nearly 2,000 employees. And Trump proposes cutting the agency’s budget in half in 2026.
Fired But Fighting also demanded the resignation of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. In a a video he had said:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
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DONALD TRUMP: KILLING MORE AMERICANS THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN: PART THREE (OF EIGHT)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2026 at 6:12 pmOn February 7, 2020, during a recorded phone interview, President Donald J. Trump shared his thoughts—and the latest medical Intelligence—about the Coronavirus with Washington Post editor/investigative reporter Bob Woodward.
TRUMP CONFESSES TO BOB WOODWARD
Bob Woodward: And so, what was [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] saying yesterday?
Donald Trump: Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation.
Woodward: Indeed, it is.
Trump: It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flues. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?
Woodward: I know. It’s much forgotten.
Trump: It’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is that the same thing?”
Woodward: What are you able to do for—
Trump: This is more deadly. This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%. So this is deadly stuff.
“This is deadly stuff.”
Unfortunately for those who believed in him, Trump was not saying this in public.
WHAT TRUMP SAID IN PUBLIC
From January to early March, 2020, Trump and his allies within the Republican party and Fox News Network repeatedly assured Americans they had nothing to fear.
Donald Trump
Barnstorming the country in a series of hate-filled political rallies, Trump told his supporters:
Coronavirus
MORE CONFESSIONS TO BOB WOODWARD
But on March 19, Trump offered a completely different take on the virus in another phone interview with Woodward:
Donald Trump: Now it’s starting out it’s not just all people, Bob. But just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older-
Bob Woodward: Yeah. Exactly.
Trump: Young people too. Plenty of young people. We’re looking at what’s going on in—
Woodward: So, give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci, or somebody who kind of… It caused a pivot in your mind, because it’s clear just from what’s on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, “Oh my God. The gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”
Trump: Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you-
Woodward: Sure. I want you to be.
Trump: I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.
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