Mr. Sterling's tough words for Republican leaders come on the heels of one of his 20-year employees received death threats, just for doing his job. Mr. Sterling said he was done. Though Mr. Sterling voted for Mr. Trump, he also explained that the president should be held to a higher standard. Yet, it is Mr. Trump who is leading the charge of irresponsibility on both fronts.
Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute explained that Mr. Trump's rally last night in Georgia focused on the two Senate-race candidates for about 10 minutes of the 90 minute speech with the rest reserved for the president's grievances and conspiracy theories about how he lost in the state and that it was rigged... Of course this is how it was predicted to go.
The panel generally agreed that the president's toxic anti-democratic rhetoric could suppress the vote in Georgia, giving the Democrats control of the Senate. This could very well be the case, however Steve Kornacki explained that Georgians with intention voted for a split ticket - Trump out and Republican control of the Senate - with Biden winning the state by 13K+ votes, but incumbent Senator David Perdue getting 88K+ more votes than challenger Jon Ossoff. The question here is whether Trump supporters view the president's irresponsible voter-fraud/ rigged-election rhetoric as a show or do they think it's for real.
The president gives his supporters what they want, getting them angry and fired up in the moment, but chances are that at the end of the day, they will turn out to vote. Ms. Pletka said that if there is depressed turnout and Republicans lose even one of the seats, he will be to blame. It's difficult to imagine these two races splitting between parties.
Well that was five paragraphs too many...
We're not making light of this totally unprecedented assault on our democracy of respecting the vote and the peace transition of power by the President of the United States no less. There is no way to minimize the fecklessness and irresponsibility of Republicans in Congress who do not accept or will not say publicly that Joe Biden is the President-elect.
But it palls in comparison to Mr. Trump walking away from any responsibility on combatting the Covid-19 pandemic. In terms of leading this fight, the president has flat out quit on us.
And if you don't think so, let these numbers soak in...
Not only did he not talk about the pandemic at his rally, but the rally itself was potentially a super spreader event. Chuck Todd asked Corona Virus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx about the mixed messaging coming from Administration health officials and the president. But what really can Dr. Birx say to that question at this point? She along with many other health professionals, namely Dr. Anthony Fauci, have been thrown into a political hell that they can't even understand, let alone see coming.
Dr. Birx said that she didn't want to be critical on television any individual state or official (good move) and reiterated the mitigation measures - wearing a mask, socially distancing, washing hands, not gathering in big groups - that we all should be following.
There within lies the rub.
The populace writ large is not being responsible either. Dr. Birx mentioned that we haven't yet experienced the spike in cases from the Thanksgiving holiday. You read about public officials, Democrats in particular are guilty of this, telling their constituents to exercise mitigation but don't do it themselves. Sure, we're lacking leadership from the president and on down it's quite spotty but when you see statistics like these:
As of Dec. 6th,
U.S. Cases: 14.6+ million
U.S. Deaths: 281,202;
you would think people would take personal responsibility and protect not only themselves but their families as well; just as a precaution, right? Alas, that is certainly not the case and our hospital systems are being pushed beyond the limit. Even when all this ends, we'll need a public fund to assist healthcare workers with all the PTSD they are sure to suffer from in the future.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) explained that a bi-partisan group of Senators came together over the holiday to put together a bill for Covid relief in the range of $908 billion. It's frankly not enough but it's at the very least something. This is the kind of responsibility you want to see from your Senators only to have it undone by a cynical Senate Majority Leader and a president who has not interest in the oath that he took way back when on January 20th, 2016 - to protect the American people.
Determined to hamper the transition and knee-cap the incoming president as much as possible, Donald Trump is irresponsibly putting the safety of the American people at extreme risk.
Panel: Kimberly Atkins, Boston Globe; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute; Jeff Mason, Reuters; Steve Kornacki, NBC News
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