Trump Goes Savage On DeSantis' Covid Policies
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Trump Goes Savage On DeSantis' Covid Policies
Hit em from the right, left, top, bottom, everywhere
Well, now we know how Donald Trump is going to deal with his weakness on Covid versus Ron DeSantis: insist that the Florida governor beloved for his policies by conservatives and Independents and yes many Trump supporters got it all wrong! He was wrong to shut down and wrong to reopen! He was wrong to listen to Fauci and then to ignore Fauci! He was both too harsh and not harsh enough! Worst of all, he actually did worse than Andrew Cuomo — an opinion Andrew Cuomo strongly agrees with!
At The Spectator, I write on the Last of the Cuomosexuals:
Last summer, it seemed clear to me, at least, that should Florida governor Ron DeSantis enter the 2024 primary, a major point of contention with former president Donald Trump would be the contrast in their responses to Covid.
Where Trump gave decision-making power over to the cabal of Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx and the burgeoning public health bureaucracy, DeSantis defied their silly authoritarian approaches in his state to open beaches and businesses. The comparison is obvious and for DeSantis quite beneficial. The open question was how Trump would respond.
Well, a week into the DeSantis campaign, now we know: Trump thinks DeSantis sucked on Covid, and so did Florida! Instead of sounding a note of ownership of the state’s successes — that such freedom was only possible under a White House that respected gubernatorial power to make such decisions — Trump has decided DeSantis’s local control was very, very bad, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Has he hired whistleblower lunatic Rebekah Jones yet?
The best part of this approach is Trump’s decision to laud the disgraced Andrew Cuomo’s handling of Covid in New York, which led to immeasurable excess deaths. Ever the antithesis of hip, Trump has become the last of the Cuomosexuals, in thrall to the former governor’s every capable-sounding word and his hand sanitizer that was definitely not a convoluted grift.
The exiled Cuomo hailed the praise from the former president: “Donald Trump tells the truth, finally,” he tweeted. Trump’s campaign later sent out an email blast containing “evidence” of the Florida governor’s “Lying Record on Covid.” The mailer criticizes DeSantis for praising vaccines and, gasp, being pictured wearing a mask… both things for which President Trump’s administration advocated.
Maybe Trump just never got around to having his merch restitched. But the idea that he alone, Democrat or Republican, would be out there defending Andrew Cuomo’s record just goes to show: there is honor among skeeves.
Debt Ceiling Deal Rolls On
Thanks to Thomas Massie, who had some pointed words for critic Russ Vought.
“I’m glad we had 3 days to read this because it took me 2.5 to get to yes,” conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Tuesday night at a rowdy GOP Conference meeting about the debt deal.
Massie was a pivotal vote in favor of the rule. If he had joined Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) in voting against the rule, the conservative trio could have tanked it.
“When people want to express their ideology, the floor of the House on the actual final passage of the bill is the place to do that,” Massie said.
The House Rules Committee advanced the bipartisan debt deal to the floor in a 7-6 vote launching the bill to the House floor, as the effort by Roy and Norman to block the debt plan from a full House vote fell apart.
The Rules panel approved a “closed” rule, meaning no amendments were made in order for the full chamber to alter the bill…
In a tweet Monday, Roy suggested that McCarthy’s team had told him that the GOP-controlled Rules panel would not advance a bill “without unanimous Republican votes,” though he offered no evidence of that agreement with the speaker, and McCarthy allies have publicly questioned his assertion.
And in a radio interview on Tuesday, Roy appeared to directly link the fate of the debt bill to McCarthy’s speakership. Roy didn’t mention the California Republican by name, but said if he isn’t able to prevent the legislation from passing then “we’re going to have to then regroup and figure out the whole [House GOP] leadership arrangement again.”
Massie, meanwhile, highlighted over the weekend how the deal could give Republicans more leverage in government funding talks later this year, but did not say how he would vote. Part of the agreement includes a plan, which Massie advocated for, that would require a one percent spending cut if Congress doesn’t pass a plan to fund the government by Oct. 1.
Massie also pushed back on accusations that he had criticized the agreement, adding in a Sunday tweet: “I haven’t blasted this deal. Section 102 is a version of the Massie Plan. 72 hours to read a bill is an eternity compared to what we’ve been given in the past. Less than 100 pages is somewhat of a miracle.”
The Senate braces for what comes next.
DeSantis Heads To Iowa
Fires back at Trump, defends record during an active schedule.
“Leadership is not about entertainment. It’s not about building a brand. It’s not about virtue signaling,” DeSantis said. “It is about results.” …
DeSantis’ event Tuesday night and four-stop blitz across the state on Wednesday will offer the first test of his ability to build a coalition of voters who can beat the former president.
“I’ve been listening to these politicians talk about securing the border for years and years and years,” DeSantis said, in one of many subtle jabs against Trump. “I can tell you, if I’m president, this will finally be the time where we bring this issue to a conclusion.”
DeSantis’ speech introduction was particularly policy heavy, railing against President Biden’s handling of the border, fentanyl, the economy, the national debt, energy, China, vaccines and more, lambasting an “unaccountable, weaponized administrative state.”
Despite making a handful of veiled attacks of Trump throughout his address at Eternity Church outside Des Moines, DeSantis also echoed some of the core themes of Trump’s movement, criticizing the “elites” who are “imposing their agenda on us.”
DeSantis’ aggressive schedule in the Hawkeye State illustrates the intensity with which he intends to brawl with Trump here. He has pitched himself as an energetic executive and the multiple stops appear designed as a demonstration of it.
More on DeSantis’s Trump hits.
How Teachers Unions Broke Education
As an Oakland public school teacher, I was a staunch supporter of the teachers’ union and was a union representative at my school for three years. In 2020, however, I began to disagree with the union when it prevented me from returning to my classroom long after studies proved that school reopening was safe, even without COVID-19 mitigation measures. In my experience, the union’s actions were not motivated by sincere fears, but rather by a desire to virtue-signal and maintain comfortable work-from-home conditions.
Although union bosses like Randi Weingarten continue to obfuscate their role in school closures, the historical record is clear: the union repeatedly pushed to keep schools closed, and areas with greater union influence kept schools closed longer. Politicians, public health officials, and the media certainly had a hand in this fiasco, but the union egged on dramatic news stories, framed school reopening as a partisan issue, and directly interfered in CDC recommendations. Teachers saw first-hand that virtual learning was a farce and that children were suffering. While there may be plenty of blame to go around, teachers’ abandonment of their own students was a special kind of betrayal.
I am well-aware that there were many problems plaguing public education before school closures, and that teaching was a challenging and exhausting job. Today, however, the crisis teachers face is an order of magnitude worse than it was in 2019, and this crisis is almost entirely self-inflicted. Public school enrollment is plummeting, kids are refusing to go to school, and disciplinary problems are spiraling out of control.
Many districts are in freefall. In Baltimore, one high school student told the local news that, “The rising number of violence within city public schools has been unfathomable.” More than 80% of US schools have reported an increase in behavior issues. Nearly half of all schools have teacher shortages, and teachers continue to leave in droves.
Nationally, the chronic absence rate doubled, and it is not showing signs of improvement. In one San Francisco elementary school, almost 90% of students were chronically absent in the 2021-2022 school year. In New York City, 50% of all Black students and 47% of all Latino students were chronically absent. Parents have no idea how far behind their kids really are, and schools cannot repair learning loss on a mass scale because the available workforce is simply not up to the task.
What happened in 2020 was the result of a long process in which the union replaced labor-related goals, which are finite and measurable, with activism, which is infinite and abstract. In 2018, a group of West Virginia teachers kicked off a national teacher strike wave. Most of these strikes had reasonable goals and broad public support, but, like all social movements, this strike wave gave birth to insatiable fanaticism.
Feature
Items of Interest
Foreign
Nouriel Roubini: China and the U.S. are on a collision course.
Manufacturers seek alternatives to China as tensions rise.
Russia recruits mercenaries for Ukraine war over Twitter, Facebook.
Iran and Afghanistan tension raises over water.
Domestic
Conservative opponents admit defeat on debt ceiling bill.
Debt deal raises age of Americans who must work for food aid.
Why Biden’s debt deal may worsen the economy.
First Republican publicly supports ousting McCarthy.
Rep. Chris Stewart, Utah Republican, to resign.
James Comer to speak with Christopher Wray as FBI defies subpoena.
Six members of Texas AG Paxton’s office take leave to defend him in Senate trial.
Paxton support: A time for choosing in Texas.
Jamie Dimon says he never discussed Jeffrey Epstein accounts.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief to retire.
Asian American support for Democrats declines.
Newt Gingrich on his new book.
Chick fil A DEI hire sparks calls for boycott.
Tara Reade, Biden accuser, defects to Russia.
2024
Chris Christie to announce he’s running for president.
Trump slams Kayleigh McEnany for citing poll.
Media
New Yorker: Latinos can be white supremacists, too.
Ephemera
Skenazy: The importance of teaching your kids to swim.
Dodgers’ reliever Blake Treinen blasts organization over Pride group.
Will we ever know the real George Orwell?
Ted Lasso’s finale — “So Long, Farewell.”
Harrington: Why Gen Z prefers dogs to babies.
Podcast
Quote
“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”
— Thomas Sowell